Beshalach ~ Aish Kodesh February 2, 2012

Rabbi Henoch Dov Hoffman

Index of Rabbi Hoffman's Audio Files Aish Kodesh February 2, 2012, Beshalach Paro could access only the name of Elokim, which has the same numerical value as _____ Aish Kodesh February 2, 2012, Beshalach Paro could access only the name of Elokim, which has the same numerical value as _____ Evolution is what happens in nature and Elokim is what happens in nature. Torah agrees that nature operates might makes right. Natureâs essence seems to be cruel. Itâs the job of the Jew to partner with HaShem. In Creation G*d said He would hide. This is the world of hidden. The material world, Asiah, is the world of action. So every mitzvah has an action component. 248 weâre working on and weâre still working on this Torah, Rachame, from last week. The 248 get up and do mitzvahs. For example, putting on tefillin was in these parshas. We put them on according to the name of HaShem, YKVK. This whole book of Exodus is about revealing- Weâre working on rachame to become compassionate. Some people say all you have to do is be nice to be compassionate. Iâm a birth expert. My credentials are being at the birth of my children, which was a supreme experience and partially post traumatic stress. Iâm a teacher and a psychotherapist. Today is a little-known celebration of the shells of seeds disintegrating to prepare for germination. In my therapy I do a lot of work in helping people bringing down their walls. I had wonderful experiences throughout my life with birth. All these are contained in the word RECHEM, womb. In English we donât have a word like this, wombness, which is the central word of the whole Torah, the job of a Jew. Student: English is a technical language. Rabbi: Xtians arenât comfortable with a womanâs body part. Weâre going to talk about how we teach about sexuality and modesty with tolerance instead of intolerance and anger, which has come up a lot in Israel and also America. The Talmud is 100 times more comfortable in talking about sexuality than the average rabbi, which I attribute to living in a Xtian world, which has suppression of sexuality. Nearly every story in the Talmud has a sexual aspect. Itâs different cultural viewpoint. The battle of Amalak is the opposite of compassion. Amalak feeds off of shame, ELOKIM. Aish Kodesh says Amalak hits us at this place of vulnerability. This is a very important paragraph. We read it now and again on Purim. Haman was a direct descendant of Amalak. Amalak is not a tribe but a force in the human psyche. Torah says if we lose the battle of Amalak then we live in a manic-depressive world. The lion attacks the sick deer. We in through the Red Sea. There were four different opinions at the Red Sea. Weâre calling this Freedom 106 post-graduate course in Freedom. Freedom is: Student: Making your own decisions. Rabbi: Amalak is one facet of evil in the world. Youâre thinking of your own definition. Freedom is: Person: Not bound. Student: The ability to make choices and act on them. Person: To be able to be responsible for myself and make the choices I want to make without having somebody else come down on me. Not morality, not ethical standards. Student: Having a behira point, free choices. Person: Not under the sway of my knee-jerk reactions, seeing the potential in a situation and going for it. Rabbi: Thereâs a difference between internal and external forces. Student: Being able to make action based on your own decisions, no coercion from others. Rabbi: Youâre putting your vote in with the external people. Person: Donât bother me with the facts, I know Iâm right. Iâm one of those internal-freedom guys. Freedom is to be able to recognize have the foresight and the self-knowledge to recognize the difference between habits and compulsive drives, knowing whatâs really good for me. Student: I donât have external bondage, but internally I do. Not being able to be myself because of fear of what people think. Not having those outside forces impact my way of being. Person: I think it is without limit, or no limits, Iâm free to do and think and act in any way I want. Rabbi: In this parsha the Jewish people think that freedom is getting out from the oppression of the Egyptians and G*d is taking them on the trip in which he says the exodus is the ability to internalize this experience and understand that your habits and compulsions are your prison. Each person has his own prison. The idea of a Jew and Shabbos, and I keep this picture of two Jews dancing around the chamber pot. Haman made an arrangement for his daughter to pour the chamber pot on Mordechai and when they switched clothes she poured it on Hamanâs head. This idea of arrogance and pride; Hitler and Paro both had self-aggrandizement, arrogance and addiction to power. Some people are addicted to having their foot on someone elseâs neck. This is the ultimate addiction and Paro is the poster child for this. The Aish Kodesh is saying to the Jews we can be free in the Warsaw Ghetto. The slavery was a crucible because the family of Jacob was not Rachman to each other; they almost killed Joseph and the slavery was a direct outcome of that behavior. When we are not rachim we are vulnerable to these things. Itâs not just fate. Last week we introduced the 248 mitzvas and we got the first get-up-and-do mitzvas. First the moon. Fetus, EBOR, is a very important word in Hebrew. The big thing that happens with the moon is that life is like peristalsis. Student: Rhythmic contraction of smooth muscle and propels everything through the food canal. Rabbi: Jewish history waxes and wanes and also is peristalsis. So is birth. This is all in tune with the moon metaphor and we live in a sun world. The sun world does not have this womb metaphor of expansion and contraction. Our reactions and moods are a big part of this. Amalak tries to create a manic-depressive reality. But before every birth thereâs a void. Before Creation there was darkness on the face of the void; emptiness. If weâre in the moon metaphor we can turn those moments into a birth. If you take a film and take out the spaces between the frames youâd see a big blur. We need these voids. Torah says you have to creatively use this peristalsis in your life of contraction and expansion. Amalak says thereâs no connection between the up and the down. Failure, youâre doomed and the only thing the world recognizes is strength and success. Person: The sun represents itâs only night or itâs day. Rabbi: Right. And this is devastating with moods; you get locked in and thereâs no cyclical thinking. The first mitzvah is to declare the new moon and control and shift the paradigm. The second mitzvah was the seder and roasting the lamb for the seder. And roast it in the fetal position with its head between its knees. We are the fetus. Creativity at birth is the theme. So much in Torah is about this world rachman, wombness. So the first two mitzvahs are with the fetus. The third mitzvah overtly given (there are many other sub-mitzvahs given later, like tie the sheep to the bedpost) is the mitzvah of firstborn, which is again the fetus, the birth, that we have - A negative consequence on the inability to give the first fruits. The first person who had this inability was Cain. It prevents closeness. G*d said to Cain you donât have space for me to be close to you. If you have a donkey, you would bring the firstborn of the donkey to the Temple or sell it and bring the money to the Temple as a donation. If you had a plum tree, you canât touch the plums for the first three years. Then the first plum on the tree canât be consumed. By that time youâre so eager to get your plums, you bring it to the Temple at Shavuos. When you make challah, you take the first pinch of dough and throw it back in the oven and burn it. If you can give away the first fruits then you have a tool to elevate your life to holiness. The first out of your womb, if itâs a boy, you have to do pidyan ha ben. The first child out of your womb is important. This is a symbol of a process: how do you give the first in a relationship. The first moments of the day are called our first fruits. When we give them to G*d in study and prayer, it changes the texture of your day. Student: You acknowledge who is your Source, that you are not your own source. Rabbi: The Torah asks constantly that we prioritize our lives. If itâs an important relationship, Iâm going to give my best. Every time I lead a hike, the psychology of being in the front of the line, which is an upper, is totally different than being last, a downer. I always have to put the strongest person at the back of the line or it can literally cause death. I learned that one the hard way. Itâs real. Stone Chumash page 390: And Amalak came. Each one of these is not a straightforward verb, but itâs converting the future into the past. In my preferred world of freedom, habit is the biggest tyrant. You have this amazing unique quality to the Hebrew language where you put a vov at the beginning at the future becomes the past. Itâs past tense by putting a wall in front of the future, like the future ran into a head-on collision with a wall. No other language has this. Rifidim means soft hands. This is what happened after the Jews got through the Red Sea. This is one of the most important and most repeated in the whole Torah because Amalak is the main force of discouragement and depression, so you have people who cannot change and cannot move forward. Jewish history can be very discouraging and we have never capitulated to that discouragement. So many families had the enticement of conversion and didnât give in. Weâll have a parade, weâll pay you, and if you donât, weâll kill you. The first thing we had to do was watch this year of plagues, where G*d is saying this is not about them, itâs about you. Itâs a hard sell after youâve spent 210 years of being whipped. Most people say freedom is not being forced by somebody out there to do something. We know from conversations with black people that that process of internalizing freedom can last very many generations. The worst slaves are the people who donât know theyâre slaves. Every Friday night we say âespecially those prisoners at this table.â Pick people and they will go out and battle with Amalak. Iâm going to go to the top of the mountain and lift my hands to G*d. We still use that as a symbol of hope, the lifting of the hands. Al Natilat Yadayim. Why does it say lifting the hands, not washing the hands? To battle Amalak we have to lift our hands. War and bread are the same word. Egypt was the place where bread was invented, and you didnât have organized warfare until you had bread. Before that you had hunters and gatherers and you had to move with the herd. From bread you get private property and warfare. Civilization is born out of the inherent discontent of bread. For most of history bread was the most processed of all the foods, 11 steps from the wheat to the loaf. These are our first 11 types of work forbidden on Shabbos. Making bread is a big deal. Part of itâs symbolic and some of itâs just real. We have the first mitzvah of lifting the hands. So we lift our hands every time we eat bread because it can bring war or wellbeing, health, satisfaction, bring the Shabbos table to us. This is the essence of being a civilized human being. The making of bread in Mesopotamia became very oppressive. All the first bread cultures were Mesopotamia, Egypt and Yellow River in China. These were the places where they were made simultaneously more or less in the world. Moshe, Aaron and Ur went up to the top of the mountain, when Moshe lifted his hands the Jews won the battle with Amalak and when he lowered his hands they lost. It doesnât say which was the cause and which was the effect. One way, everything rests on Moshe and the other way it all rests on the Jewish people; people get the leader they deserve. The hands of Moshe were heavy and they put a stone and placed it under his hands and Aaron and Chur both sat on these big rocks and held up Mosheâs hands. Write this in your book and you shall surely erase the memory of Amalak from under the heavens. Moshe made an altar there and this is one of the crucial sentences in the parsha: that the hand of Amalak covers up the YK, YKVK with Amalak dor vâdor. From generation to generation. The word DOR has the same 204 numerical value as tzaddik. In every generation a tzaddik through his love helps the Jewish people fight Amalak, and the Aish Kodesh is one of these tzadikim. He called Hitler and the Nazis Amalak. The tzaddik (204) fights with Amalak. He has to lead the battle with Amalak. The Aish Kodesh literally saw himself as a general in this battle and this is why he couldnât leave; he had to go down with the ship. And weâre still fighting. But the strange thing is these two words: CASE a shortened version of the word chair, and YK is a shortened version of wombness and compassion, which is a peristalsis word. The Yod is contracted, the Hey expands. It embodies this wombness of creativity and the creative principle of our lives that G*d is giving us. This is the parsha of the Yam Suf (Sea of Reeds). Being backed up on an isthmus of land with our back to the ocean. Fight or flight. In the first paragraph of this parsha we have Paro sending us out in a rush. So weâre being pushed out the way a mother will push out a new baby. Then the Jews are caught in Nebuchim, trap, pitifully trapped. G*d says I want you to be pitifully trapped in the desert. To be free you have to learn how to be trapped. Peristalsis. You donât have the expansion without the contraction. If you donât understand the ways in which youâre not free, freedom is meaningless word. There were massive waves of conversion in Europe before World War II because they thought it would really liberate them. In the twenties and thirties there was a huge influx of Jews into the universities and we did extremely well. Imagine your feeling as you walk into the room behind a barb wire wall with ten Chassidim and payas and black coats. These were supremely cultured people, walking in with your fur coat, feh! And to live in a room with ten people like that! âI thought I was liberated, I thought I was free.â Weâre backed up against the wall. The sea is on three sides. Fight or go back, die Kiddush HaShem. Our prime examples of die kiddish HaShem are Hannah and her sons and Massadah. Kvetching is a big part of freedom. Student: When you complain you see whatâs wrong with everything. You can get into the habit. Rabbi: I read a great on nagging. It is one of the top causes of divorce. Student: If Iâm busy trying to figure out why HaShem put this thing in front of me I wonât have time to kvetch. Kvetching is a habit. Rabbi: Begging and complaining are not the same thing. Shabbos is a day to stop complaining. On Shabbos you donât ask for your needs for that reason. If you were faced with the decision: letâs fight (weâre armed), letâs join them and go back to Egypt, or letâs die and sanctify G*dâs name as a martyr. Student: Remember Amalakâs name to erase his name. You have to erase his name so youâre not depressed but you have to remember his name or it will happen again. Kvetching is protect yourself from happening again the future. Rabbi: Yes but for one day a week you have to stop it. Student: Fight. Person: Fight. Student: Pretend to be dead then give it to them. Person: Fight. Student: Fight. Person: Fight. Student: Negotiate under a white flag. Rabbi: If you start fighting the Egyptians, there is no end to it. Zev told me, once you start fighting you can fight the rest of your life. Jews have a great enemies list. We have a good enemies list. Theyâve all done us dirty. We can fight our enemies ad infinitum. HaShem says you have to move forward to get the Torah and if you start fighting youâll never get there. He says plow yourselves, move forward and I will fight for you. Moving forward is often not fighting backwards. Nachshon walked into the water up to his nostrils, not over his nostrils and when he took that risk and said thatâs what it feels like to move forward, itâs risky. The next thing that happened after the Red Sea was that G*d took the water away from them for three days to say this is this kvetching and to address this Amalak event. They think theyâre solid, theyâve got G*d on their side and then all of a sudden the water disappears for three days. Whatâs G*dâs point? Student: Preparing them mentally to be such stiff necked people so when they get the Torah they will keep it no matter what. Rabbi: They have to get through the test of Amalak to get to the Torah. They have to get past complaining and discouragement. Person: That was expecting G*d to do their work for them. Rabbi: Even the mana was a test. It would fall a distance from you as a measure of your faith. Everything that happened was feedback and every place they went people failed. The biggest test is: what do you do with failure? One of the biggest things I taught was teaching kids how to fail. SACRED FIRE PAGE 264 Weâre on the magreffa. -What can this teach usâ¦. Rabbi: Chaim Vital was a Syrian Jew from Alepo. The Syrian Jews are smart people and very good business people. They had to leave Syria with nothing and are now one of the wealthiest groups in the whole world. He lived in the 1500s. He had the unique distinction of being the only student of the Isaac Luria of Safat. The Arizal taught him for three years and he wrote down what he learned and changed the whole world. The Aish Kodesh has mastered this whole literature, thousands of books. The Arizal is very, very difficult. One of the books is The Gate of Holiness. -âThe evil inclination in man is patternedâ¦. In his holy book Imrei Elimelechâ¦. Rabbi: Thatâs an important concept. Heâs summarizing whole books. Repression of human desire does not work because it puts the fire out. Just because I have snow on top does not mean the fireâs out. Jose would play chess with the most passionate people in Lublin because he said I can turn a passionate person into a passionate Jew, but I canât do anything with someone who has lost passion. The Torahâs job is to create a passionate person, not to turn out the fire, channel the fires, not put them out. This is how Torah is different from Xtianity, that says just suppress it. Thereâs no dancing, none of this, none of that, celibacy, no money. We oppose this. This is very dangerous. You end of killing people emotionally if you cut off their passionate. It is a difficult exercise to channel instead of cutting off. -The same passion a person might use to do wrongâ¦. Rabbi: Amalak works within religion. Religion can be chilling. A teacher can be chilling. A study, criticism; these all can be chilling. The whole battle is that we are G*dâs partners in selling hope to the world and the Aish Kodesh is our model because heâs giving hope to people who are in a very difficult position. Just like Moshe had to show the people who were backed up against the sea a way to go forward. So the Aish Kodesh is Moshe Rabeinu here. -The evil inclination is, as it were, fourfoldâ¦. Rabbi: One of the worst attributes is somebody like a snake. The snake probed the relationship between Adam, Eve and G*d. Student: He discovered that Adam changed the commandment that Adam gave to Eve. Rabbi: He was afraid if she touched it she would eat from it. Adding to a commandment is as bad as detracting from one. A lot of work went into each fence around the Torah, or you end up in repression and not in channeling. It discourages people. Thereâs an insidious thing. There are emotional predators. Student: they donât recognize you as a person. Just take from you what they want or need. Person: To some extent all relationships have a predatory element. A person who is needy attracts people who can connect with that neediness, and if become more resilient the point of connection is broken and the relationship ends. To the extent that this process is unconscious, there is a predatory element. Rabbi: If you sense somebodyâs vulnerability and jump on it, this is not ethical behavior. -We need to understand what this meansâ¦. Rabbi: Has anybody here ever used passivity or indifference creatively? Student: Sometimes to become indifferent to food. Person: Sometimes Iâm indifferent when Iâm hurt instead of lashing out. Rabbi: I pass up fights. Student: What did He say at the Red Sea? Rabbi: He said, âMove forward.â When Nachshon stepped in, the Sea parted a little bit, but only as we stepped forward. Moving forward and taking risks is better than moving backwards. Person: I could pass up a fight because I had roots. People in my position who grew up in America donât. Rabbi: Apathy can be used creatively to cut off our reactivity to something. Here in the Warsaw Ghetto, though, once thereâs a certain milky look in your eyes and your spirit is crushed, youâre as good as dead. Once a personâs faith is damaged, itâs intangible but itâs so real, then you canât use these things creatively, then your apathy becomes you. -One might ask how laziness and the Earth elements damage faithâ¦. Rabbi: Like G*dâs abandoned me, everyoneâs abandoned me, Iâm in a corner and thereâs nobody to help. -This is why even in the Templeâ¦. Rabbi: This world is cut off by contract. All the words holy are taking something mundane, like kiddish, taking alcohol, or sex, food. All these things are called holy, also taking death through saying kaddish. We can take anything. The ways of mitzvote are ways of connecting and revealing G*dâs presence in the concrete world. When a Jew reveals G*dâs presence, we are bringing light to the whole world and this has to be done with great simcha, and even the ashes of Auschwitz can be elevated in this way. -There is perhapsâ¦. Rabbi: He is talking about his son. Love is also peristalsis, cyclical. The Torah brilliantly says every marriage should have a stop and a go, and this is in the menstrual cycle. We have to recognize the cyclical nature of love. -This is the significance of the musicâ¦. Rabbi: Weâre not using the word âmerciful.â We use âcompassionateâ or even better âwomb.â G*d is the energy of birth. Heâs instilling birth pain, saying we can give birth to the state of Israel out of our pain. But itâs deeper: the Germans can kill our bodies but canât kill our passion. Itâs an amazing achievement that the Jews got up and made a passionate Israel; weâre a passionate people. -Rashi explains G*d as sayingâ¦. So the acknowledgement of loss when we say kaddish, this can be a passionate holy expression of connecting worlds and not just a despair of loss. Bringing this G*d faith earth energy into my birthday, Iâve coined a phrase from Zalman Schachter: Iâm losing my youth, ageing, and giving birth to saging. Student: âI was so much older then, Iâm younger than that now.â Rabbi: Having a passion for birth has been a big part of my life. That faith in birth energy as a process. Why I was born on this date, which was a celebration. Ninth of Shvat, six months from Tisha bâAv. On Sunday bring blessings, devar Torah, for a celebration of birthing energy. Itâs a birthing day. FINAL WORDS: Student: reading about how the earth element can damage faith and connects it with the ashes and then the music reminds me of the story of King Saul, how he would get discouraged and David would revive him with music, and how discouraging many Jews had come out from the Holocaust to a point of depression. It is a time to be revitalized by making simchas. You canât talk your way out of that, that music can get in there and bring that out and bring the person up out of that heavy earthiness. Rabbi: Jacob was depressed and when his granddaughter sang him a song she lifted the veil of depression. Itâs a powerful story. I told this story to a woman who said I was depressed and hospitalized and I couldnât talk until a friend of mine in Israel sent me a tape of music and after a period of six months of total silence I was able to talk again from this music. Reb Shlomo came into a room of people who had been in a coma for at least two years. He played a song. The doctor said youâre not going to get them to respond. He said turn off the lights because sometimes things happen in the dark that donât happen in the light, and they started to respond. Person: I really liked this piece. Weâve worked on it before and we could work on it a lot more. Creatively moving forward instead of fighting backwards. I also really like the contemplation about the emotional predator. I think we all have that. Itâs very much intertwined and connected to our desires. I liked the Aish Kodeshâs words in this piece that addresses that: only then it becomes obvious that the detachment has to precede the arousal. That little bit of removal and distance is very important. Last week I talked about the fearlessness of the Aish Kodesh talking about the ashes and bringing in that sense of joy which also addresses the inner v. outer freedom, that even with our outer freedom being restricted with the right stuff we can still feel free because our inner freedom canât be squashed. I like how all that interplays. Student: Thereâs more thoughts this week that are really mind boggling. The future habit that becomes the past. Rabbi: We have ashes that we can raise. Person: I was gone for a week and a half and I can relate to the longing and arousal. When I got back I was using any pretext to call my husband several times a day. Itâs still a wonder after seven years that Iâve found my soul-mate. Then with regard to the major conflict in my life with my sisters, during the time I wanted them out of my life, I still longed for them. I couldnât get rid of them; they were inside me. So when things arenât going well I feel the either/or, discouragement of Amalak, and I think, âI canât do this.â But when thereâs so progress, I really feel the birthing analogy; itâs been tremendously useful. Birthing can be unpleasant. You feel taken over by this process, you get big and heavy, and then thereâs the contractions. But when you see that there is a possibility of birth, itâs all worth it. Iâm on the upswing right now. They softened a bit and that gave me the opportunity to try something, and we got some compromise and some affirmation, and it went very well. A couple of days ago my aim was to refrain from arguing; then I clarified it to be affirming. My support group props me up when Iâm discouraged so I can go out and try again. It felt very good for about 24 hours until the next thing came up, but Iâm not so engaged. Iâm looking forward to a time when I can just be proactive without needing to be propped up by my support group. Student: I read some of the Tolkein book, The Silmarillion, which is compared a lot to mysticism and he has a chapter about music and the healing powers of it. In Lord of the Rings the owls played a positive part of it. Research has been done on how music works on emotions and the brain. And regarding peristalsis, when I see the mooning getting full I feel my strength coming. Itâs nice on a dark night. But when thereâs no moon and no stars and youâre in a tent, itâs pretty scary. As the moon is starting to wax, I start feeling a lot more optimistic about life and less scared. Rabbi: Itâs so powerful that womenâs menstrual cycles will coordinate and harmonize with the moon. Men donât tap into this. Person: With the laws of Nida, the men do get to tap into it a bit. Person: Iâm relating to peristalsis and love. I have grown daughters. I was close with them when I was raising them, then we were separated by life happenings. It was shocking to me how far away from them I felt, then I would talk to people about it and people said youâre free, you have your life, but there was a terrible emptiness. Recently I visited them and there was a big breakthrough and we talked about it, and thereâs been a difference. Iâm ecstatically in love with them again. Itâs ecstasy. I love her as a wife, as a mother, as a lawyer. Before when people would say youâre free, I have more time, but THIS feels much more like freedom. Rabbi: Freedom sometimes feels like being bound by love. Making use of the loneliness, the dead times. Amalak says when youâre lonely youâre dead, gone. Some people give up at these times. Student: I told my wife how much I liked my freedom but then I thought maybe freedom was really being bound by love and maybe I really do want to be married. Thatâs what Passover is about. Person: I like to talk about nagging and freedom and what that means in relating to G*d. You canât relate to G*d if you donât have the freedom to express yourself. We nag at G*d all the time; we nag about meshiach. Not everyone can do that. A womenâs interfaith discussion group, they had Jews and Xtians and Muslims and they were all talking about their own texts. The Jews talked about Torah, Muslims about Koran. It broke down because the Muslim women couldnât do it. They understood anything that deviated from the rote understanding of the text was a blasphemy. Some of them began crying. I was struck tonight with the freedom we have in our relationship to G*d. We couldnât have hope that anything could change if we didnât have that relationship. What a contrast to those Muslim women! Today is your birthday and an important anniversary, 30 years of the town of Chama when Hafez al Sayed, the head of Syria, put down a rebellion and killed 30,000 people. The lack of freedom in those cultures and their religious traditions stifles this process. Itâs a low point when people turn on their brethren that way. Rabbi: In our essay the wombness towards each other is what Shmah Yisrael is about and gives us defense. Fortunately for Jews that hatred does not turn into killing each other. That will take care of itself if you have this connection. Amalak is always there whenever we get to our potential. Itâs part of my creative process. Then they camp at the Mountain Sinai as one heart and then the unity of the Torah comes down as a response. Person: Over the table someone was discussing about knowing the enemy and said letâs become experts on our enemies and know everything we can and thatâs how we win the battle. So I think whatâs my worst enemy in myself? So I need to become an expert on myself, and thatâs the only way I can see myself better and confront my fears. If I do that I have half of the battle won. The other half means to find the balance between how I can conquer those evils. Rabbi: The Aish Kodesh compares it to seeds germinating. Once you get into this process of birthing faith in G*d, not just in a theoretical energy, but faith in an energy that pervades all reality, and once youâre in tune with that you give birth to yourself. Thatâs the constant effort of Torah. Shabbos is simply the contracted time when you canât always be expanding, you have to contract. Shabbos and the week, contract and expand. Thereâs a song of the magreffa that you start to hear, G*dâs song of birth in the world, and then youâre more tuned into your potential. Pogo said âI have seen the enemy and he is us.â Joseph said the same thing in prison. Student: Iâm trying to process magreffa and Auschwitz, to link those two. Rabbi: Most people would say talking about ashes or his dead son would be taboo. Student: Auschwitz is total loss of identity. With the magreffa and what comes out of the ashes, that is where Iâm trying to process. Rabbi: Thatâs the part that was left behind in the concrete world as their souls floated up, and their ashes are longing, we were left behind, and weâre the beauty of the altar, and Auschwitz was G*dâs altar. Radical thought but so true. Person: My house was sold on Friday, the house here was bought. I was so happy on Friday and on Sunday I got sick and Iâve been sick ever since. Why is it that I canât move? I havenât been able to pack. For a long time I was feeling very happy and expansive and yet Iâm not quite ready to move on. Rabbi: We donât like change. The hardest person to be rachmaness, womblike, with is ourselves. Give ourselves that push and love and listen to ourselves. Many times weâll get sick as a signal: slow down. Rabbi Henoch Dov teaches in Denver, Colorado. You can contact him through his web page, www.RabbiHenochDov.com or via email sh6r6v4t9@aol.com.

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