Parashat Re'eh

Welcome to Parshisah Shavua with Rabbi Garari. This week's Parshisah is Parshisah Re'e. And this Shabbos is not just Parshisah Re'e, but it's also Shabbos Mavar'him Elul. It's the Shabbos which introduces the Elul journey preparation time to Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur, where Mitzah Shem Hashem will bless us all with a wonderful, amazing year. But of course we have to do our bit and prepare, reflect and get ready to absorb the power of the two months of Elul and Tishrei. So I want to share with you a short idea on the Parshisah and then maybe perhaps connect it to Elul as well. This week's Parshisah we have the Mitzah of Kashris where the Torah tells us the simonim, the signs of a kosher animal. Kosher fish, kosher birds, but let's focus on an animal for the time being. And we know that the Torah tells us that the two signs that are there for a kosher animal is Maphreses parshisah. It's got to have split hooves all the way and Maleggerah chew the cut. Now let's just focus a little bit on the Halachic discussion which is interesting. There's a Halachic discussion if these signs are just signs of kosher animals, meaning it's got nothing to do with the Kashris of the animal. It just happens to be that all kosher animals share this one common characteristic and they have split hooves and they chew their cut. Bore? Is it different? Is it that these two signs, the fact that they have split hooves and choose the cut is what makes it a kosher animal? So let's take that approach for the time being and understand it spiritually what that means. Because our life centres around a spiritual interaction with an animal. We have an animal soul. We are engaging all the time with a physical animalistic world in a way. And the question is how do we make it kosher? In other words, what is the key? What is the key to a kosher experience in the physical and sometimes animalistic world? Because we know that all Mitzvahs are not just Mitzvahs that we do in action. That is the most important part of the Mitzvahs of course. But every Mitzvah, as the Ramam says, contains lessons, contains symbolism, contains ideas of how to fulfil that Mitzvah spiritually and apply it to your avaidas asem. So let's talk about these two signs spiritually what they mean. Maphresas, parsa and Mali-Gheira. Maphresas, parsa means split hooves, which means that the hoof of the animal is split completely into two, in two different directions, two different entities. What that refers to, we are taught, that refers to the two primary emotional energy that a person has. We know that, Kabbalistically, we have ten powers of the soul, three are intellectual, seven are emotional, but the emotions split primarily into two tracks, chesed and gavura. Chesed is everything that we do that connects to love, gives, is flexible, attracted to and so on and so forth. And gavura is more discipline, holding back, strictness and so on. And generally speaking, a person is born with one particular dominant personality. See, people that are more chesed people, people that are more gavura people. And incidentally when we say this, we don't mean chesed to be a good thing and gavura to be a bad thing. Although chesed always gets a good rap because it's kindness and kindness is generally a good thing, gavura often is considered negative because it lends itself and it's very easily brought to negative aggression or rejection or violence even. But nevertheless we know that there's good chesed and bad chesed. So chesed can be, is very good when you love, when you give, when you kind. It can be misplaced, it can be bad as well, but gavura, gavura which sometimes you know strictness or aggression or firmness can be bad, but nevertheless actually it can be very good. Gavura is a good thing, discipline and self-control, being particular in the nuances of a mitzvah. All those things are all part of gavura, being very careful of the halacha, the manutas detail of halacha, that's all good things, that's all gavura. What the Torah teaches us is that although every person has a personality and every person has a particular approach and his personality, we even find this by the obvious hakadoshim, the holy forefathers of Rome's primary thing was chesed, Yitzchak's was gavura, but nevertheless the Torah tells us if you want to be able to survive in this world, spiritually speaking, you have to have split hooves which means you have to have both chesed and gavura, that it's okay to nurture and to channel and to, and to strengthen your natural personality and to excel in that, spiritually speaking. But nevertheless when the hour calls for it, you have to be able to also do gavura as well, or chesed as well, whatever you don't have naturally. Whatever you don't have naturally is important to engage in as well. In other words, there are times where we have to transcend our nature, transcend our natural personality to do what is right, to do what Hashem wants us to do. We find this idea when the Yiddin came out of Mishraim and they went through the yamsuf, they went through the sea and they were on the way to receive the Torah, and the Torah tells us, bahamaim, lohem, haimah, the sea splits and the water became a wall on each side, mi minnam umi smailam, the right hand and the left, the right side and the left side, which also in chesed as we explain, this means chesed and gavura, because if you're going to receive the Torah, you need to know that you're going to have to use both the chesed and the gavura, notwithstanding that only one is your dominant personality. So that's the kashr, that's what creates the kashr, that creates the cautionness of your human experience. That's number one. Number two, we have to have chudakar, malagera. What's malagera? Malagera, so literally it means that an animal eats food and then regurgitates it and chooses it again and so on. What does symbolize as spiritually is the concept of constant reflection. In the physical world, obviously when we do very spiritual mitzvahs in a person, davins, that's a mitzvah, all these things are obvious and don't need that much reflection. You don't need reflection if you're going to put on filim every day or like Chabah's can or that's just mitzvahs. But most of our day we spend in engaging with the world, not particularly in a specific mitzvah environment. And nevertheless we are taught everything we do must be to serve Hashem. In order to accomplish that everything we encounter needs reflection. We need to think about is this right, is this wrong, do I need this, do I not need this? I might think this is a good thing but maybe it's not a good thing. I need to reflect, I need to ask someone, I need to share. That's the idea of malagera, which of course is very connected to Eloh because in Eloh is the chaydeh shahashmin, it's the month of reckoning, it's the month of reflection. It's the month to have a look at how our way to serve Hashem is general, not only specific mitzvahs but also how we generally are going in terms of how we serve Hashem in general terms. I want to wish everyone a good day and a good Chabahs and approaching Eloh and already begin wishing people a good year and only good things.