Parashat Shoftim

Welcome to Parshah's Hashi of the World with Rabbi Gerrari. This is the week of Parshah Shaitan. Parshah Shaitan was as many Mitzvahs including, I'm not going to go through all of them, including establishing a court system for the Jewish people, putting judges and law enforcement people by all the gates. Talks about appointing kings as the preparation of how Jews should go to war with confidence and faith and other Mitzvahs which are spoken about in the Parshah. But today what I want to do is I want to talk about a little bit the beginning of the Parshah and a little bit towards the end of the Parshah and share with you an idea that comes from the Avodasi Shrol who is the Qajnitsa Maghit. And I share with you this idea of course in line with what the Shalaw says. And the Shalaw tells us that any Parshah that we learn, although the Parshah is going chronological order, they also are always connected with the time that we read them. And Parshah Shaitan was an interesting one because Parshahs were A that we read this past week. He's sometimes Elul, sometimes Shabbos Mavarachim Elul. So it's always connected to Elul, but Parshah shaitan, that we read this week, is always in the month of Elul. And of course the month of Elul we know is the month of, where Hashem is very close to us and he's asking us to return to him in a very loving way. But our job of course is, it's called khaydesh, khashban, the khaydesh to make a real reckoning and a reflection and take stock of our strength and our weaknesses of the past year. And with our weaknesses of course the idea is to reflect on them, feel a bit uncomfortable with them and to do chuvah. Chuvah means to fix and to improve and to come closer to Hashem. The word chuvah means not only repentance, but the word chuvah of course means na shuvah to return to Hashem, to reconnect with Hashem after maybe we've caused some distance by doing the things we shouldn't have done. And a lot of the Spharium talk about how Parshah Shaitan is so connected to chuvah and the Khajatsam Magi takes us a little bit further and he goes through a couple of things in the Parshah which are so incredibly important when it comes to the process of chuvah, which is what we do in Elo. So the first thing is he brings something which is very based on the shah al atayrah, where the very first Amitzvah in atayrah is, in the Parshah is shayftim v'shaichrim titein l'chal b'chol sh'arachah. Make judges and law enforcement people you should place on all your gates. Of course, literal translation is about all the different places where the tribes lived in Ertug's soul, all the cities and so on. There has to be a base then there have to be people that enforce the law, enforce the halachic rulings of the base then. But on a different level and more to do with Elo and the khashban, that the gates, we're talking about titein l'chal place on your gates. Your gates means the gates of your body. And one of the ways we do chuvah in Elo is to reflect on what we give out and what we let into our body. And because of this, the shah al atayrah says that there are gates, our gates of the body, our eyes, our ears, even the nostrils, our mouth, et cetera. And one of the ideas is that we reflect, like what do we, in terms of our mouth, what do we say? How do we talk to other people? What do we learn in what type of eating do we engage in? Our ears, what do we listen to? Is it listening to Loshan hurrah? Is it listening to bad things? In terms of our eyes, what are we looking at? What are we entertaining in certain, in terms of the things that we look at and absorb? And so on and so forth. And this is the one of the ways that we do chuvah and because most of our experiences have to do with the faculties of our gates, have to do what we hear, what we say, have we said brotha's properly, have we dove in properly with our mouth? And so on and so forth. And this is a concept which comes up many svarim and the khashatsum, I could bring it as well at the beginning of the pashah, avay das ishral. Pashah shayftim. Then he continues and he says, the Torah continues to give a number of different aspects of how one shouldn't make mistakes in the process and the journey of chuvah. One idea he says, the Torah tells us, lo satan mishmah do not distort the judgment and do not take bribes. He says, one of the failings of the human being often is that we are biased, self-bias of course, and therefore we rationalize things and we are not completely honest with the way we reconnect. One of the ways he says is that sometimes we can be engaged in something which is really wrong. Now again, I want to just point out, of course, the purpose of discussing this is not to induce guilt. Guilt is not a good thing, but the process of chuvah as the Ramam das say, is that we need to identify and be honest with our khashpana. Also we have to have some level of harata, some level of not guilt, but discomfort or pain of having done things that create a distance between us and Hashem in order to create an urgency that we should fix it and resolve to become better. Okay, so he says, one of the ways we do that is the pashik says do not take bribery. Bribery means sometimes people, they'll do something that's inappropriate or wrong, but then because they will have a shir afterwards and they'll do Torah and they'll learn Torah, do a mitzvah, they think everything is taken care of. Now of course we know that the power of a mitzvah is unbelievable, you cannot undo a mitzvah just because I did something wrong. The mitzvah is eternal, the mitzvah creates a bond between us and Hashem, but at the same time the mitzvah is beautiful and powerful in its own, but it doesn't fix all the things that we need to fix just because we did a mitzvah, that's like bribery and you couldn't say oh, I did a mitzvah, I learned to have yoimi today, so therefore everything else I did is okay, it doesn't work like that. Everything is different and everything we have to go through properly and reflect and try to improve. Then he talks about another aspect of chuvah, which is really important, and that is arrogance. The Torah tells us do not place a voydozora tree or a idolatrous monument next to the mitzvah. The mitzvah is a symbol of our experience of serving Hashem where you bring carbonus, become closer to God. The tree, the tall standing tree or the monument, the strong monument is a symbol of arrogance. The number one thing that stands in the way, that stands in the way of a person becoming closer to Hashem, especially during the month of Elul where the closer to Hashem is in the context of doing chuvah, we can never really be honest or humble or acknowledge the things that we need to improve if we are arrogant. And this is part of what the Torah tells us, do not place a monument or a tree and an arrogant voydozora tree next to the mitzvah because once you mix arrogance into serving Hashem, there's no real honesty and there's always self-bias and personal self-rationalization, et cetera. And therefore we can't really improve and we can't come closer to Hashem. Then he says therefore, when we do chuvah and this is connected with something else in the end of the parashah, there's two things that have to come together and this is such an important concept. One is of course to be humble and they even have the concept of David Hamalach saying in chapter 51 of the Helium, which is the chapter of chuvah really, and he talks about the laiv and nishpah of a nitke, the broken heart, in other words, yes. On some level we have to feel in pain and uncomfortable with the fact that we have created a distance between us and Hashem. But at the same time he says, we have to really believe that Hashem wants us to do chuvah. We have to reflect on the greatness of Hashem. That same God who created the entire universe wants us to serve him. He wants us to come a little bit closer. And in part of that is he wants our davani and he wants our chuvah. He wants us to improve a little bit that every part of what we do, he embraces and he loves. So both things are true together and that's how we do it. We often work on two opposite things together. Yes, chuvah is a time where we need to also be a little bit humble and sometimes have feelings of discomfort to the point of David Amalak saying, laiv and nishpah of a nitke, a broken heart, which is not meant to create despair on the country. It's meant to create a sense of urgency to really try and improve, take the next step. And that we do by understanding and acknowledging the things that we have done which haven't been proper. But at the same time we have to have that feeling of warmness and closeness to Hashem and understand that Hashem accepts and embraces every single little bit of our midst, a little bit of improvements. And he says, he says a beautiful thing. He says, that's why Hashem tells us that when we go out to war, in this week's partial, we go out to war. And when the Eden would go out to war, at the end of the partial it says, when the Eden would go out to war. And a Cuyhen would get up and he would prep the people to go out to war. He got up and the first thing he says, Shema Yisrael, he says, listen Jewish people. Atem kravim ha'yoyim lam lchomah. You are going out to war. Alt-Ti-roh do not be afraid, have confidence and so on and so forth. So the beginning of the partial with the Cuyhen says, Shema Yisrael, listen Jewish people. I mean, on the literal sense of just the Cuyhen getting up, the Lide getting up and calling everyone to attention. But there's an amazing comment of Rashi. Rashi says, why does he begin with the word Shema Yisrael? Rashi says that you should know that even if you only have the squs of saying Shema Yisrael every day, you say the Shema, in that merit you'll be saved. And I'm a first time talk about the war. Obviously on a simple level, let's talk about the literal war that the Jews would fight. But there's also the war, the inner war, the war against the Yitzahara, the war against the evil within us, the war against temptation, the war of struggle, of spiritual growth. Well, we have to know that war is, first we'll have confidence that we can actually win that war, that we can do it. We can become closer and closer to Hashem all the time. But to also understand how precious every step is. Shema Yisrael, even if one step is Shema Yisrael, you do another mitzer, one more mitzer, you improve just a little bit. During LLUBS we make a proper hashpun, but we can't become perfect overnight. So we take something on. We're improving some areas, much as we possibly can. That little bit is already so precious. And it's part of the closest we have with Hashem and the greatness that we have to understand Hashem's greatness that he wants the simple person's improvement, the simple person's growth. So yes, on the one hand, we have to also be economically honest with our failings. Now then we really have to understand how Hashem really gives us the power to overcome that struggle. It gives us the power to do sugar. We know famously, he doesn't talk about this, but we know famously this idea that in the month of LLUBS we have the melech, basal, the king is accessible. Hashem is talking, the king is talking to every single person. You just have to go over to him. You just have to notice that he's there. But he will talk to anyone, no matter what we've done during the year, no matter how far we have strayed. Hashem wants us and he wants every little step that we do as evident in the parashah, Shema Yisrael, even if you just say the Shema, you have then created the closest with Hashem to the point that you can win the war just in that skus, in that merit. I wish everyone a really, really meaningful month of LLUBS. And of course Hashem looks at our little efforts and he sees where we are, he knows our struggles, he knows our weaknesses. And of course he's going to bench every single one of us with aksiva vachasimotoyva and a really, really good year ahead. Have a wonderful day and a good Shabbos.