מועדים

Why do we get punished after being good? Reb נחמן מברסלב Used to say the following parable. There was once two friends one was Jewish, and one was a gentile. They did business together and ended up Erev Pesach together in a Jewish city. So the jew told the gentile to go to the shul tonight and someone will invite you over for a very lavish meal as the Jews are accustomed to invite a guest to there Pesach meal. So the gentile goes to the shul, and he gets summoned to some rich man's house. He is all excited about what he will be served and sits down to the table with the rest of the guest. He is waiting for the food to come, but he sees the host just praying and telling stories, so he starts losing his patience. After a few hours, he sees they are finally bringing in some food. He looks up, and he gets this hard cracker so he thinks maybe this is just an appetizer and then he finally sees them bringing in something white, so his hopes are lifted. As he was so hungry, he took a huge spoonful of this…

Can we find the lost tune of shir hashirum? Shir hashirim is called by rabbi Akivah the holy of the holies. Where can we find the tune of the holiest song ever sang? The answer is that we all already know it! Science has come up with a theory called string theory which in very short means that the world is really made of vibrations. But in Judaism, we already knew that, as it says in the verse in tehilim בדבר השם שמים נעשו. This world is made from Gods word vibrating out. When we want to express an idea to others we vibrate it out with our words, if we want to express something deeper like feelings we can express them in a song .If we want to express our deepest feeling of longing it can sometimes come out as a cry but to express it to others we can only tell a story of how it would feel but we have no way of truly expressing the actual deep feeling.We can say verses like עַל מִשְׁכָּבִי בַּלֵּילוֹת בִּקַּשְׁתִּי אֵת שֶׁאָהֲבָה נַפְשִׁי בִּקַּשְׁתִּיו וְלֹא מְצָאתִיו but there is no way to truly express that because its something that is…

"slowly please,I am in a hurry" God tells Moshe how the Jewish people should eat the #pesach sacrifice while still in Egypt ככה תאכלו אותו מתניכם חגורים… ואכלתם אותו בחיפזון This verse has two very unique words that are not found directly in any other biblical command and seem contradictory. The word which means to do it ככה precisely" like this "and then the command to do it fast בחיפזון. Why is this the only commandment with these unique features and how can I do something precisely when I am in such a rush? This reminds me of when I was a new driver and once drove my grandfather home. I was speeding as most new drivers would, and he told me this sentence which didn't make sense to me at the time "drive slowly I am in a rush." The Jews were in Egypt for over 200 years and if they stayed there any longer they would have been entirely taken over by the slave mentality, and there would be no nation to take out, so God had to give them a small commandment to elevate them somewhat, but they had to get out ASAP, so they are not lost. The danger…

The words חמץ and מצה with how the letters are shaped hold the secret why we eat מצה on passover. The difference of letters in the words ח-מץ and מצ-ה is the letter ח and ה. When the same piece of dough is in a simple flat form without anything extra it is a מצה with a ה. The letter ה has a little break on its left leg on the top which shows the openness of willing to hear from others. The person is in a receiving state like a child's mind (just like the Jews were when they left Egypt as a child going into the wilderness) without any previous notions. But חמץ is a dough that has risen showing an arrogant person. The ח is closed on the top showing it has closed its receiving mind and is only open at the bottom willing to give ideas and not accept. On the night of pesach, we eat the simple מצה to relive and reconnect to the spiritual state the Jews were at on this same night as a child with wonder leaving his mind open to experience anything that comes up. Like the prophet Jeremiah said זכרתי…

So why dont we eat מצה all year round ? After we become so inspired how matza is such a great idea of humility, of a child's mind of everything is truly only god the question arises . Why do eat maza only 7 days not all year round? David in tehilim chapter 104 says יצא אדם לפעלו לעבודתו עדי ערב . 'מה רבו מעשיך ה David is in middle of describing the beauty of nature in a profound way.Why is he suddenly saying here smack in the middle of the story "how great are your works" ? The reason for that is because the greatest thing in the world is that a person goes out to work every day which many times seem like darkness (ערב) and he can change the world to be a better more spiritual place to see god's work something that none of nature can do and that is where the statement of 'מה רבו מעשיך ה belongs more then anywhere else of that chapter . We are not here in this world to be living on the top of a mountain or a retreat all our lives.We are not here to be "workshop junkies…

Getting out of the box We find a very unique word in describing the Jewish nation work in Egypt "מסכנות" ויבן ערי מסכנות לפרעה So the gemara has two explanations what the word מסכנות means either that he gave them dangerous work that puts them in a סכנה or that he made them poor as a מסכן since whoever gets into construction becomes poor,( as anyone who built a house with a open ended budget knows quite well you never know where you finish). The question is if they were slaves how is possible to make them poor since they are not financially independent ? It could be that these 2 explanations are really trying to say the same thing . In Egypt the דעת Was in exile. The word דעת Means personal creativity as the gemara says כשם שפרצופיהם שונים כך דעותיהם שונות Even if a person is poor financially if he can feel he is being creative and bringing out his personal potential and creativity he won't be considered so poor as the gemara says אין עני אלא בדעת . Pharaoh was trying to take them poor in דעת which is everyone's personal creativity so he gave them…

למה כשהשם שולח משה לגאול את ישראל ,משה שואל" מה שמו מה אומר אליהם " וכי משה לא ידע מי מדבר איליו מה העניין שהשם אומר למשה קודם להגיד להם השם אהיה ומיד אחרי זה אומר כה תאמר אל בני ישראל הויה וגו' שלחני שהגאולה ע"י הויה למה לא אוכלים מצה כל השנה והנראה בזה כשהיו ישראל במצרים היה להם הגילוי של השם רק בבחינת שם אלוקים שזה אומר שהקב"ה נמצא רק בהוה רק מה שנראה לעינים האמינו שהוא מנהל ,לא את העתיד ובטח לא יכול לשנות את העבר ,וזה שם אלהי' מרמז כמו המילה  אלה -הנראה והנגלה והטבע(אלוקים בגימטריא הטבע) הם הבינו שחייב שיש מישהו שמסובב את זה אבל לא שום דבר מעבר לזה ובגלל זה כתוב בחז"ל שעבד במצרים לא יכול לברוח כי האמינו שהמצב הקיים הוא החיות שלהם ורק כך יוכלו להמשיך להתקיים וזה היה קושי השעבוד ולכן במראה הסנה כתוב "ויקרא אליו אלוקים " שהקריאה למשה לגאול את ישראל הגיע מהמצב שבני ישראל עמדו באותו עת שזה גילוי של שם אלוקים ובגלל זה כתוב "ויסתר משה פניו כי ירא מהבט אל האלוקים " כיון שמשה היה בדרגא יותר גבוה שבני ישראל עמדו אז והוא פיחד לרדת לדרגא של אלוקים ולכן מיד שאל את השם "מה שמו…