Parsha Review Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

00:01 - Intro (Announcement)
You are listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast.

00:10 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
All right, welcome back everybody. To those of you who are on Facebook, youtube and Twitter, I apologize, but we're having some technical issues here with my. Did I go off and back on? Okay, there we go. All right, so welcome back. This is the weekly Parsha Review.

00:25
This week's Parsha is Parsha's Va-Era. It's the second Parsha in the book of Exodus and the 14th Parsha from the beginning of the Torah. There are 121 verses, 1,748 words and 6,701 letters. Now, very interestingly, this week I had the privilege of speaking with a schoolteacher from Dallas and we talked about what are the lessons that they want to impart to their students, and they said the number one lesson they want their students to leave with is to know something that we say in our class every single week there isn't an extra letter in the Torah. If children can just leave school knowing that one principle there isn't an extra letter in the Torah that is the most important lesson you can teach your students, the most important thing that we can learn for ourselves there isn't an extra word, not an extra verse and not an extra letter in the Torah. When we understand that. We understand how precious every word in the Torah is, so we dissect it. If you look at all the commentaries and we're talking about thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of commentaries on the Torah, not an extra letter in the Torah, which is the emphasis, the purpose of each of those commentaries to figure out, why does it say this? Why does it say it like this? There are no mitzvahs in this week's parasha, no prohibitions, no performative commandments. We'll see in the coming weeks we're going to start getting a huge increase in the number of mitzvahs per parasha.

02:07
But the parasha begins with Hashem sending Moshe to inform the Jewish people that he will take them out of Egypt. And there are four terminologies that are used to express our redemption, and they are I will take you out from the burdens of slavery before redemption, I will rescue you from their servitude. I will redeem you by splitting the sea and I will take you as my nation. There's a fifth term, which is the cup of Elijah. We have the four cups of wine that we have every Seder. It's because of these four terminologies of freedom and redemption. And there's one more, which is Elijah's cup, and that is I will bring you of a hevesi and I will bring you to the promised land of Israel.

02:55
The Jewish people don't listen. They don't listen because they are so troubled by the slavery, they're so despondent by the challenges that they've experienced in Egypt. It's very difficult for them to imagine a time where freedom will prevail. Hashem commands Moshe to go to Pharaoh and demand that he free the Jewish people. Hashem lets Moshe know that he will harden Pharaoh's heart and he won't listen, so that Hashem can give the Jews great miracles and so that we can have a relationship with Hashem. The more you do for someone, the more there is an ability for love to shine, and what Hashem was doing here is specifically going and creating amazing miracles so that we have what to connect to Hashem with. We'll see soon in one of the lessons we talk about this week's parasha is that we have miracles going on every single day and the more we look at those miracles, the more we invest in understanding and seeing, paying attention to those miracles, the more love we will feel towards the Almighty.

04:11
Moshe and Aaron show Pharaoh a sign by turning the staff into a snake. Pharaoh's magicians copy the sign emboldening Pharaoh's refusal to listen to Moshe and Aaron. Hashem tells them to inform Pharaoh that if he does not listen to Hashem, the Nile will turn into blood. Pharaoh says no and the punishing plagues begin. The Nile turns into blood, the Frog swarms Egypt and then the itchy lice infests the land. Pharaoh's magicians try to copy the miracles, encouraging Pharaoh to be obstinate Under the plague of lice. They concede that only Hashem can perform these miracles.

04:52
Moshe urges Pharaoh to free the Jewish people and end the plagues. But after agreeing to let them go, pharaoh would refuse with a heart and heart after the plague ended. So there would be a plague. Moshe would come and say come on, don't do this to your people, don't do this, don't continue to sustain these painful plagues. Let the people go. And what happens? He says okay, I'll let them go. The plague stops. Then he says just kidding, I'm not letting them go. So then comes the fourth plague. The plague's resume. Hordes of wild animals invade the land. Then all the Egyptian owned animals die. Then the Egyptians are infected with painful boils in their skin and then fire and ice. Hail falls Still, pharaoh's heart remains hardened after these seven plagues and the Jews remain stuck in Egypt.

05:48
So this is the quick summary, the quick review of this week's parasha, but there are some very important lessons that we need to take from this week's parasha. The first is that we repeat every year at our Pesach Seder, this story and it is a mitzvah. It is a mitzvah to repeat the story to our children. You should repeat the story to your children. It is a mitzvah. You put your children, your grandchildren, to sleep at night. Tell them the story of the miracles of Egypt, of our Exodus, of how Hashem, with a strong hand, removed us from our bondage, from our slavery, and Hashem fulfilled his promise and brought us to Mount Sinai and gave us Torah. All of this is critically important that we continue to review and repeat the story constantly to our children and, by the way, to ourselves.

06:49
Now, very interesting, in the Haggadah, right after we do the Manashtana and we say Avada Me'unu, we're all slaves in Egypt, we say a very interesting phrase and that is the Chol HaMarber, lisaper Beetsi, as-mitzraim HaRazi Meshubah. The more we talk about the Exodus of Egypt, the more praiseworthy we are. Our sages translate that differently sometimes and they say more praiseworthy you become, you become more fulfilled by talking about these miracles, because you know if someone does something really special for you so you can just say, oh, thank you. That's really kind and that's it. Move on.

07:32
But if you really want to feel love, you can realize that that person went out of their way, stopped what they were doing, thought about what can I do for this person. They went and picked the nicest flowers. They went to pick the specific gift that they knew that I wanted. They, I'm sure, didn't have the right color and they said no, no, no. Can you please go to the back and see if you have the right color, because I know they like that color specifically, and they took their time and bought me this gift.

08:05
That's something which, if we go out of our way, my rabbi says if you want to feel loved, think how many people needed to work for the food that I have on my dinner plate. To get there, how many people needed to work? And you start thinking you know what? From the person who planted this grain all the way to the people who delivered it to the store, all the way to the people who prepared this dinner for me and put it on my plate. It could be a hundred people. For all the different things you have on your plate. A hundred people worked so that I can have dinner, wow. But how many times do we just not even think about it and it just becomes oh, dinner was delicious, thank you bye, without taking the moment.

08:54
The more you think about it, the more enriched you will become. The more details we talk about the Exodus from Egypt, the more enriched we become. We will see how much Hashem loves us. We'll see how much Hashem cares about us. We'll see how much Hashem does for us. Talk about those details. Think about how many Jews had to leave Egypt and with all the riches they said. Amidrash says that every Jew left with 90 donkeys worth of jewels, 90 donkeys worth. Do you know how much? That is? 90 donkeys. Talking about millions and hundreds of millions of donkeys of loot that was coming with the Jewish people. It wasn't loot, it was given to us. But this is the enrichment that we will get in our lives.

09:53
By stopping and telling the details of the story, not rushing through it. Don't say, oh, it was very nice. We were in Egypt. God took us out, we went to Mount Sinai. No, the miracles. You realize that we were a nation in the desert that had zero tanks, zero missiles, zero air force, zero arms. And the nation of Amelie came to attack us and how were we sustained? How were we protected? The Almighty protected us. It's like think about that, think about the day after that war, talk about that with your children, get into the details of it. And, by the way, you don't have to be a historian to know this.

10:39
This is written in our Torah. You can read it. The verses jump out of the pages, the words jump out of the pages. Use a stone-additional Chomish. You use the Shatynstein-additional Chomish with the interlinear translation. It's beautiful, it's simple. We don't have to be the wisest scholars to know what happened.

11:00
The Torah tells us in great detail exactly what occurred, and that's a gift to each and every one of us To never stop saying the story. In fact, every time we recite the Shema, which is twice a day at minimum, morning and evening, we repeat the miracle of Egypt Asher Hozayzi, eschem Eritz Messeim, that I've taken you out from Egypt. Why? Le'yos, lechem, l'olkim? To be for you a God, to have a close relationship with you. That's why God did it. Note to that, not so that someplace back in our memory we'll be like oh, it's nice. Nice to feel Jewish. Note to feel a connection. God did it so that we have a connection, a real connection that we can talk about, and it's like, for the next five weeks we're going to be talking about this. We're talking about it last week and the next five weeks we're going to be talking about this Exodus. It's remarkable. We have the privilege of this rich heritage. Let's learn it ourselves, let's talk about it with our families and let's feel that enrichment in our lives by that closeness to our Shem. So that's point number one. The more details, the better.

12:18
Next is that we have these four languages of redemption because there are different stages. There are different stages. You have to slowly take one step after another in your freedom. It doesn't just happen in a single moment where Jews are 210 years as slaves and one day you're free. In one day we were free. But there's a process and this is what Hashem is promising us. I will take you out, I will rescue you, I will redeem you and I will take you as my nation. It's a process. It's an easy, simple process when there's love and when there's a relationship between us and the Almighty.

13:03
Now we talk about miracles. We mentioned this just before. There are always miracles going on around us. Someone who's used the restroom this morning, when you woke up, experienced a miracle. It's a miracle that we have a special blessing for. We talk about this in our Living Jewishly podcast. The blessing after we go to the bathroom is thanking Hashem for giving us a functioning body. It's a miracle.

13:39
Ask a doctor how is it that the eye sees? I don't know, but it just does. It's a miracle. We have within ourselves a miracle of a machine. My estimation is that our medical world today and this is not an octa-dim they're doing tremendous, tremendous research and they're learning unbelievable things about the human body. Now, my estimation is that we don't even know.0001% of the brilliance of the human body. It's so magnificent and it's so brilliant. We have to look at those miracles every single day, because it wasn't only 3,300 years ago that we were in Egypt, that we had miracles. Every single day. Since then, we have miracles and when we look at those miracles every single day, we'll be the happiest people on earth. We won't have depression, we won't have anxiety, because all day we'll be saying thank you, thank you, thank you, hashem, thank you.

14:50
Now there were three sets of plagues. The first set demonstrates the existence of Hashem on earth and water. As you see, the first was the blood, which was the water, the frogs, which are on the earth, and then the lice, which is like the sand, the demonstrating that Hashem is in charge of the earth and the water. The second set demonstrates that Hashem's providence extends over everything, everything that's living. We have the wild animals. The animals die, we have the boils, and then we have things that are above the earth, not on the earth. Above the earth, which is the hail, we're going to have the darkness and then we're going to have death of the firstborn.

15:40
So we see that there's a demonstration of Hashem's mastery and power that is unmatched. This is what the magicians of Pharaoh were able to replicate some of the miracles that transpired with magic, but they weren't able to reverse those magic experiences. So if they were able to make a stick into a snake, they weren't able to reverse it. And then Moses' snake eats up all of their snakes and then comes back into a stick. So, whatever they were able to do with whatever powers because there are powers out there in the world there are powers of magic, there are powers or it tells us not to get into it and not to delve into it, but there are powers in the world and they were able to tap into it in Egypt.

16:37
But God is not a magician. God is the creator of heaven and earth. It's not magic for God and we need to understand that. There's a huge distinction. Don't go to your children and say well, god was a magician and he came and he pulled a rabbit out of a hat. That's not what it's about. Hashem is the creator of heaven and earth and he can do anything. There's nothing that is out of Hashem's ability.

17:05
Hashem fights like a general. Before attacking the enemy, he starves the resources. First he took away their water, he took away their food. Then, in the way, the frogs were rewarded for their commitment to listening to Hashem's command. Who wants to jump into a burning hot oven? The frogs did so. This is what Hashem commanded us. People came home. We say this in the Haggadah that it really wasn't 10 plagues. There were many more. According to some opinions it was 50. Some say it was 100 plagues, some say it was 250 plagues, because think of this, let's just go through one plague. So that's 10 plagues.

17:52
The guy comes home from work His sister's wife I'm very thirsty, can you please prepare me a coffee? She says, sure, honey, she goes, she prepares the coffee with her new espresso machine and she brings him a coffee and it's filled with blood. He's like what's this? Is this a joke? She's like no, no, I prepared the coffee for the machine, for the new machine that you just got. And he'd be like this is ridiculous. Take his cup and throw it. Like what's going on? I want coffee, not this red stuff. She's like I'm doing exactly what you're asking me. She's like forget it, just bring me my beer, bring me my cold beer. She opens up his bottle of beer, she brings it to him and it's filled with blood and he starts going crazy. And he's Egyptian.

18:39
He starts beating his wife. You imagine what happens that now she's not happy. She's trying to treat her husband properly and she doesn't know what's going on here. So she starts getting mad at the children. The children go to the playground, the children start fighting with their friends because their mother. Do you understand what goes on here? And then she serves him his birthday cake and frogs start jumping out. Just imagine the plagues were not just a single instance of one little thing going wrong. It was the whole city's going crazy and all the ladies made the way to smell the smell in the city from the blood, the smell from the dead frogs. They say the stench that it was just, it was awful, awful, yeah. And then dead animals. You have carcasses all over. I mean, think of all the plagues.

19:35
Now I ask you a question how can Pharaoh be so dumb to continue to not let the Jewish people out? What is wrong with this guy? So our say just tell us. And this is I'm going to jump to the last point here in the important lessons and we'll go back and that is we see that a shem hardened Pharaoh's heart. After the blood, the plague of the blood, has shem hardened his heart? After the plague of frogs, he hardened his heart. After the lights, he hardened his heart. After the wild animals, he hardened his heart. After the animals, he hardened his heart. What does it mean? Hardened his heart? He gave him a rebellious streak, so to speak. No, I'm not going to do it. Why did God need to harden his heart?

20:17
So there's a very fundamental principle in all of Judaism. It's very important to know this. There are hundreds and thousands of answers to this question. I'm going to give you one that I think makes it makes it easy for us to understand. You see, there's something called free will. There's something called free will. Free will means that you have equal choice to go this way or that way, the good path or the bad path. It's your choice, equal choice. You can't put someone into an environment that is so holy without a parallel, something opposite, to pull their desires, their urges. Understand that there has to be a 50-50 balance between the options, between the choices. So if God pushes up the miracles all the way up to the highest level where you can't refute that there's a God, you can't refute that this is the will of Hashem. Now what do you expect Pharaoh to do? Of course he's going to say, okay, get out of here, go. So God had to balance out those miracles with hardening Pharaoh's heart so that there can be an equal playing field for free will. If God didn't provide Pharaoh with a hardened heart, he would have sent us after the first break. But God foretells to Moshe I'm going to harden his heart. Why? Because he's going to need it. He's going to need it.

21:55
The example I've given many times in the past is if you take a child and you say, here, I'm going to give you one of two things, which one are they going to choose. I'm going to give them a lollipop and a cockroach. Which one? Is that a fear choice? That's not a fear choice. But if it's a chocolate and a lollipop, that's already getting fear. You understand. You can't expect someone to see a lollipop and a cockroach and say, oh, that's no free will. I can tell you in advance what the child's going to pick. Well, so that's why he had the free will. With that hardened heart, he had a 50-50 choice and that's why he's punished. He's punished because he was choosing, because otherwise it wouldn't make sense. He's not choosing, he has no choice. Of course. He's going to let them free Like this. He has an actual choice. So now that he has a hardened heart, it's a 50-50 chance that he can do either one.

23:02
So there is also a Meda connegated Meda. A Meda connegated Meda, which means a measure for a measure. Every area that the Egyptians punished the Jews, they were punished. They punished them by wanting to throw their babies into the water. Their water resources were punished, etc. Etc. And that single plague was a punishment for something they did to the Jewish people. Eye for an eye, a measure for measure.

23:37
We have to understand that the way in which God conducts this world is measure for measure, except when it comes to a person's good deeds. When a person does we learned this in our Talmud thinking, talmudist lunch and learn on Friday last week when it comes to reward, the reward is far greater than the actual deed. So when someone, for example the example given in the Talmud is of Miriam that Miriam waited for Moses when he was in the Nile for one hour to see that he was going to be okay, she waited for him for one hour. When Miriam got the leprosy, because she spoke slander on Moses, the Jewish people waited for her for one week. Well, that's not equal. It's not measure for measure. She waited one hour. Therefore, they waited for her for one week. Say just tell us that good deeds are rewarded in multiples of many. It's not measure for measure For good deeds, it's multiples beyond our comprehension.

24:50
Another thing that we learned very, very important from this week's parasha is Moses' gratitude and appreciation for the water that saved him. When Moshe was asked to hit the water, he says I can't hit the water. When Moshe was asked to hit the earth that helped him bury the Egyptian more than 80 years earlier, he says I can't hit that earth, the same earth that helped me, the same water that helped me. I can't hurt that. It's very important and one of the most fundamental attributes of the Jewish people is Hakkara Satov recognizing the good.

25:31
When you benefit from something, be very, very careful about doing something negative to them. Someone hires you for a job, even though they're mean, they're nasty, they're not. I had someone just this week call me. He says my boss is so mean to me, my boss is so condescending to me. He says what do I do? I said you need to be grateful that your boss hired you, that he pays you your paycheck. You want to say nasty things about him, about the person who believed in you. He believed in you. You're able to pay your rent, you're able to sustain your livelihood because he pays you, because he takes care of you.

26:19
Yeah, there are some things that unfortunately don't go exactly as planned. You can't throw a stone into the well that gave you water and Moshe lived that. The water that saved me. I can't hit it. I can't. I can't do it. The earth that helped me I can't hit it. I can't do it. That's greatness. Greatness is think of.

26:53
In a tragic scenario of a divorce, they can't think of one positive thing to say about the other, the guy and the girl. She's oh, she was, she's terrible, she's this. You married her, you have children together. You didn't get along, that's fine. Not everyone gets along. But to say something nasty about someone who loved you, someone who cherished you, someone who went under the canopy with you, we have to be so careful. Bor, she's, she's, she's a, but my am a a well from which you drank water. Don't throw stones in it, and this is a basic virtue of the Jewish people. So, my dear friends, I urge you, like I do every week, take out a homish, take out a stone additional homish.

27:50
Read the English, read the Hebrew, read the translation, read the commentaries. It's so rich. Our heritage is so beautiful. Read the story, read it to your, to your spouse, read it to your children. Enjoy your redemption. This is our heritage. It doesn't belong to the rabbis, it doesn't belong to the scholars. It belongs to each and every one of us. Morasha Kehilas Yaakov!! Take your history and cherish it. Have a great Shabbos.