We are about to go further in the Birchot Keriat Shema. We did the first line for the first few weeks. Last week, we learned about the Ra of the world, evil. We got into that a little bit and defined it. Anything that’s not Hashem, anything that’s not Torah, is not good, and that’s bad. There’s no Pareve (neutral); there’s nothing in the middle. If it’s not good, it’s bad, and we have to try to identify it everywhere we go, everywhere we are, on any level we’re on. We have to keep trying to identify the Ra in our lives and keep separating. You purify, you purify, you get rid of the Ra, you grow a little more, and you find there’s more Ra, just a little finer. It’s more subtle; it’s harder to see. But when you get there, you can feel it. Get rid of it again. As you grow, you keep purifying Ra and the Tov (good), Ra and the Tov. You keep separating. That’s what Adam HaRishon did. He mixed it all together. He made it into one thing. That’s why it’s all mixed in with us.
The first Pasuk (verse) tells us how Hashem created everything. We learned about how—I don’t know if we talked about this last week—Hashem created the Ra. Did we talk about that? “No?” “No?” You’re talking about the board, the table, this, that. How did He do it? How? “No?” “Mechanism used.” Okay, good. It’s a good thing to talk about because we learned about Ra, so we have to know how it came about.
You have to know that everything happens through Hashem’s shining face. Everything happens through He’arat Panim, Hashem’s shining face. We say in the Birkat Kohanim, “Hashem should shine His face on you.” That means you want Hashem to look at you. You know, you go like this to somebody. You want him to look at you straight on. When Hashem looks at a person or something in the world, everything burns. Burns. What do I mean by “burn”? I mean it’s complete. Complete perfection. Complete spirituality. No physicality, no evil, no desires. It’s just completely, perfectly spiritual. Hashem looking straight on, straight on at you. That’s what we’re praying for. Yeah, Hashem. You want Hashem to shine His face on us. Hashem’s face is always shining. You don’t get Hashem’s sad face. That’s the thing. When Hashem turns to you and looks at you, that’s it. There’s nothing else to discuss. Everything gets burnt.
How did the Ra come about? There was a point in the creation of the world where Hashem decided to turn away, and now the back of His head was facing the world instead of the front of His face. So it’s hashpa’ah (influence) of the back, not of the front. It’s not His shining face; it’s the back of His head. When Moshe Rabbeinu asked Hashem, “Show me your ways,” Hashem said, “You’re going to see my back. You’re not going to see my front. You can’t see my front. My front is not to be seen. You can’t see Hashem front.” Of course, Hashem doesn’t have a front or a back, but it’s all allegorical. You can’t see Hashem in the direct way where you’re going to see the full clarity of the explanations. There’s no way for a person to understand that, and to come face to face with that kind of clarity is something a human can’t tolerate. It’s too much truth, too much clarity. So Hashem told Moshe, “You’re going to see the back of my face. You’re going to see the back. You’ll see me, but you’ll see the back.” Allegorical. That means you’ll see a bit of unclarity. You’ll see a bit fuzzy. It’s not going to be complete clarity. Clarity, I mean, is not just what it seems like; it’s what you understand. All the clarity we talk about is your perception. How much do you pick up? How much do you understand? How clear is your perception? When we see Hashem’s shining face, that means we have a very clear perception.
The Ra, the evil, was created by Hashem turning away and allowing certain imperfections to take place. If you look straight up, there’ll be no imperfections. Everything will be completely perfect. He turned away momentarily to allow certain imperfections to happen. As that snowballs through the worlds and comes down, it ends up in our world. It turns into a physical essence that we call today evil, that we call Ra. And that’s the beginning of it. From there, any physicality mushrooms into something, into Avonot, desires—things that are not in line with the Torah. But it starts with the essence of physicality. It came about through Hashem turning away from His face, turning away His head. So it’s a very deep, basic concept that we have to keep in mind, and it’s going to help us understand certain things as we go along. This idea that Hashem turned away—it’s the influence of the back instead of the influence of the front. Understand? Got it? So that’s the Ra, all right? We’ll keep getting back to this, you’ll see.
“He who brings light to the world and to the ones who live on it with mercy, and with his goodness he renews every day always the actions of the beginning” refers to the original six days of creation, right? So with Hashem’s goodness, He renews every day, always. There are two words: every day and always. We’ll talk about that in a minute. He renews every day, always. The six days of creation. Okay, that’s what that means.
Let’s go back a second. Hashem brings light to the world and to the people who live on it with mercy. What’s the mercy of Hashem bringing light to the world? What’s the mercy part about it? Where’s the mercy there? Because it’s not dark. There’s a mercy. The answer is that sometimes there can be too much light. Imagine if there were no night and your whole life was one long day. How would that feel? You never get a chance to start again. Imagine you had a tough day. It doesn’t end. It just keeps going, right? So too much light, sometimes humans can’t handle it. Too bright. Too much warmth. The sun needs to come down just to stop and start again. That’s the way humans are. So the amount of light that we have, the fact that it’s limited in some way—there’s more in the summer, less in the winter, and it’s different in different places in the world, right? Warmer, cooler. The light is limited in many ways. It’s for the benefit of humans, so they can tolerate and appreciate it better. That’s the Rachamim (mercy) that we’re talking about. So Hashem brings light to the world and to the people with mercy. With His goodness, He renews the day. He renews the world every day. Not “every day,” but “always.” It’s really always, not every day. The renewal of the world is minute by minute, moment by moment. We’ve learned before that Hashem is constantly recreating the world. That’s the way the world exists. There’s no continuation. The world doesn’t have its own continuity. Hashem keeps continuously, constantly recreating the world. So it says over here, Hashem renews the world. That’s what that means. That means every moment is a new world. It’s renewing. It’s being renewed. We only see it every day. We see it once a day when the sun comes up. When the sun comes up in the morning, you wake up to a new day. You can feel the renewal. You can feel the newness. Ah, a new day. Beautiful day. You have a whole day ahead of you. You have a day of opportunity, aspirations, dreams, a new day. You can feel the beauty, the renewal of the day.
That is a mashal (parable). It’s a mashal. We’re supposed to take a lesson from that. What’s the lesson? That’s just one moment of the day when we can see it, when we can perceive some part of it, some part of the renewal. There’s renewal constantly, much bigger renewal than just a new day. It’s a whole new world. Everything is renewed. We can feel one part of it once a day when the sun comes up, and we’re supposed to take that as a lesson: to learn from there how everything gets renewed every moment of the day.
You know, we have something called—so you all heard of it. People read it to be able to get a lot of good things. The idea is not to read it, but to learn it. One of the introductions I have printed in the books is called, “Anybody who says Perek Shira every day, this and this happens.” Wonderful, right? There are a lot of good things. I don’t even know. I don’t get busy with that. I don’t even read that part. But the real wording is not “the one who says it.” The real wording is about how it’s said: one who studies it, one who learns Perek Shira. Learning Perek Shira. Just for a minute, what is Perek Shira? Perek Shira is something that was compiled, they say, by David HaMelech, so it goes pretty far back. David figured out the essence of each creation and the message that each creation is saying to us. Every part of this world has a message. Every leaf on the tree is telling you something. The message it’s telling you is supposed to be used for you to get closer to Hashem. That’s the message. It has a certain message. You have to be smart enough to understand what it is. But its message is something you should be using in your service of Hashem. That’s Perek Shira. Anybody who studies that every day internalizes the messages of each creation. He ends up looking at the world differently. He ends up looking at the world in a whole different perspective. He doesn’t see a leaf. He sees a message. He starts to live that way. If you do it every day, you internalize all the ideas, and you start to see things differently. It’s called “Ashrei yoshvei veitecha.” You end up living in Hashem’s house. You end up living in Hashem’s house. This whole world is tools, full of messages for us to grow. You want to know what each message is, what each thing has, what the message of each creation is? Open the Perek Shira study. That’s where it says the messages.
Parenthetical: I think we talked about this once. What’s the message of Yom (daytime)? In Perek Shira, what is the Pasuk that Yom, daytime, says? What’s the message of Yom? What’s the song that Yom screams out? That daytime, day, wants us to listen to and internalize. “Yom leyom yabia omer.” Day to day, it makes us say words. It makes us talk. The word yabia means it causes us to come out, causes us to bring out words, speeches, sayings. That’s what the Pasuk says. This is what daytime screams to us. If you look at the commentaries in that Pasuk, I think it’s Rashi who says, “What are you supposed to learn from Yom?” The newness that you see from a new day. The Chidush, the newness that you see from a new day. That’s what the day is telling us: “Look how new I am. Look how I changed the world. I created a new world here. The sun came up; it’s a new day.” You feel the Chidush. It’s a mashal for everything else, every other moment of the day. This is what we’re trying to say over here.
I think when you say these words, I would sit next to a window. Sit next to a window, you know, and when you say “He makes the world light,” stop and look out the window for a minute and see the brightness of a new day, the new light, the Chidush. Internalize it, internalize; stop and think. Look out the window and think about it, the Chidush, and try to take the leap to the next step: that every moment is the same thing on a much grander scale. That’s the service of this line. That’s the service of this line. You know, we try to live the words. This is what “live the words” means. Look out the window. See the light. See the new day. See how Hashem renewed it. Say with tremendous feeling: every day, every moment, Hashem is renewing the day. Hashem is renewing the world every single moment, moment after moment. There’s no continuity. It’s a renewal. Renewal every single second. One second has nothing to do with the second before it. It’s all brand new, every single second. Everything that the world includes, everything that you see in the world, is renewed by the second. It’s from our perspective. It’s renewed. From our perspective, it looks like moment by moment. But Hashem doesn’t have that perspective, so you can’t understand it from Hashem’s perspective. You have to understand it the way we are. All the prayers are said in the language of people, so we can understand it, use it, grow from it, and everything. Connect with it. It’s not going to be said in the language of Hashem when we’re talking about it. So that’s that.
Now, you have to understand that the first line here goes back to the first few words of the Beracha (blessing). This first line is an expansion of those first four words. The next two words, “Oseh Shalom”—He makes peace—are going to go with the next line. You understand what’s going on? So the first two lines are explaining the first four words. The next part, “Mah rabu ma’asecha Hashem”—How great are your actions, Hashem. How great are your things that you’ve done. They’re all done with great wisdom. Your world is filled. The world is filled with your acquisitions. So, “Oseh Shalom.” Let’s go back to Oseh Shalom for a second. This is explaining Oseh Shalom. Oseh Shalom means Hashem makes peace.
We talked about what peace is. Peace is not when people get along. Peace is not when everybody agrees. That’s boring. Peace is boring. We hope it happens. I hope it happens. It’s better to be bored than to fight. Yes, I agree. Real peace is when people utilize each other’s differences. The better word would be coexist. Coexist. Maybe. Maybe I’m not sure if that’s even the good word. I don’t know. I think it’s better than peace. But that means we complement each other’s differences. We’re all different. It doesn’t just apply to people, but we can start with people because that’s the first challenge. If we have people in our lives who are different from us—and everybody is different; no one is the same—everybody has something different about them. Obviously, the first thing you shouldn’t be doing is fighting. That’s number one. But let’s say you don’t fight. Great. Now you tolerate each other’s differences. You accept each other’s differences. Very nice, still not there yet. Real peace is to utilize each other’s differences, to complement each other. Meaning, my talent will complement your deficiency. Your talent will complement my deficiency. And we work together in a way where we each cover for each other’s—I don’t want, you know—something that we’re not that good at. I’m good at one thing and you’re good at something else. The thing that you’re good at, I’m not good at. The thing that I’m good at, you’re not good at. It’s easy when it’s two people; it’s very easy. When it’s a lot of people, it’s complicated, but it’s doable.
You and I complement each other. It’s like a husband and wife almost, where they see each other’s differences but they live together. If they’re doing it properly, the husband lets the wife take care of things at her strong point. The wife lets the husband take care of things at his strong point. That’s where you’re complementing each other. So real peace is when each other’s differences come out in a way that is beneficial to the goal. Like a symphony, like an orchestra, we talked about. You have different instruments that do different things, but they all blend together to make one beautiful song.
So Oseh Shalom means Hashem makes peace. Now we’re going to talk about the different things that Hashem made. “Mah rabu ma’asecha Hashem.” How great are the differences. How great are the different things that you made. How many there are. How many different things Hashem makes. Think about that. How many different creations are there? Talk about vegetation first. Talk about the domains, the inanimate objects, dirt, stones, all these different things. How many different things are there? Endless. Go to the vegetation. How many different types of plants, grasses, trees, fruit, vegetables? Endless differences. How many different animals? Oh man, millions of different species. Birds, fish, bugs. Where does it end? Then go to people. Were there ever two people the same? How many hundreds of billions of people lived on this planet? Do you think there were ever two who were exactly the same? How many different things are there? Ma rabu (how great). Maasecha (are your creations), Hashem. Still, Oseh Shalom: Hashem gives us the ability to live together and complement each other’s differences, to work together toward a common goal.
What’s that goal, by the way? Anybody know? Work together toward a common goal. What would that goal be? To serve Hashem. Serve Hashem. Everybody serves Hashem in their way. I use your strength. I can gain inspiration from what you do. You gain inspiration from what I do. What I do doesn’t necessarily speak to you. I have my own. Everybody has their own unique little avenue. For the most part, we live in a community. The rabbis all teach the same thing, okay? We all listen to the same rabbis, and we’re basically all on the same road. Well, within a certain range. But we’re not all the same. Everybody, you know, sometimes you hear a class. You come to a class for an hour, a half-hour. How many people are in the class? Each one hears the class a little differently. This one internalizes one point. The other one doesn’t care for that, but he internalizes a different point. Everybody takes to a different point of the class, and they grow with that point. That point speaks to them well, and they grow with it, and it helps them grow in their way. So each one has their own little niche that they carve out for themselves in their growth. Everybody grows in a different way. Everybody has their own little avenue. Even though we’re on the same path, we’re not all the same. It’s all based on our strengths and weaknesses, our character, what we take to, what speaks to us, our personality, and everything. We have to understand that everybody is going to be different in some way, and we have to utilize everybody else’s ideas, everybody else’s qualities, learn from them, respect them, see how great they are. And that’s part of loving every Jew. Why can you only love somebody if you learn from them? It’s to be in love. That’s real love, when you respect them enough to be able to learn from them. You know there’s something good about them. You know there’s something good about them. He’s a Jew.
They say you’re in this world to go against your nature. “Okay, so what I have, you tell me, use it. Like, really, I’m supposed to be trying to work against—I'm very shy. Don’t you say—” So you need to be very smart. You need to be very smart and understand which of your natural personalities is something you should be overcoming, and which one is something you should be using. You need a certain wisdom. It’s a hard job. I’m not giving you the answer right now. No, no, no, you don’t leave it alone. I’m not giving you the answer right now. I don’t necessarily know the answer, but that’s the job. You need to know. You need to really search deep down within and see which natural personality is coming from the Yetzer Hara (evil inclination), and what’s a real talent of Yiddish Shema. That’s what you need to figure out. It’s deep, deep soul searching. That’s a very, very hard thing to do. You need to really dig, dig, dig and dig. Where is this coming from? In other words, when you act—let’s say a person is, like you said, shy. When you act shy, you have a certain comfort level. You’re comfortable in that position because that’s the way you are. Good. So that feeling of comfort, you need to know: is that satisfying your neshamah (soul), or is that satisfying your Yetzer Hara? If it’s satisfying your Yetzer Hara, you’ve got to try to break it. If it’s satisfying your neshamah, then you work with it, and you see where it can take you. That means it’s something you should be using. You can do who knows what with that. You have to really dig down deep and see where it’s coming from and why I feel that. What’s making me feel that? It’s an honest introspection times ten. That’s what that is.
If it’s coming from—if it’s coming from Yiddish, then you’ll have situations where you can use it and situations where you have to get away from it. If it’s coming from the Yetzer Hara, you gotta break it. I gotta break it. Now, figuring out how to break it is not easy, but that’s another thing. After you figure out that you need to break it, then you can go about figuring out how to break it. Hard job, hard job. Hard job. That could be a manifestation of something good. It could be a bad manifestation of something good. It doesn’t have to be something bad. In other words, you have to know what the root is, where it’s coming from. You have to know where it’s coming from. You have to know where it’s coming from.
The way to figure it out is to go back and try... First of all, you have to be in touch with your feelings. That’s number one. You need to understand what you’re feeling. You need to be in tune with your feelings, okay? Then you can pay attention to when you feel that way, when you feel that comfort, and step back in your brain, in your subconscious, and try to figure out: why is that making me feel comfortable? What’s comfortable about that? Okay, now you took a step back. Now you figured that out. Okay, great. Now go back another step. Why is that happening? Why am I feeling that? When you figure that out, go back again. Why am I thinking that way?
Give an example. The easiest example is anger. What if it’s something like—not terrible, but something you really do, like you’re always late? You’re late for work. It’s something you feel like, you know, you should work on. Sometimes it’s obvious that something needs to be worked on. Sometimes, you know, sometimes it’s obvious. A good example would be anger. I think anger is something that almost everybody struggles with on some level, okay? So the way to figure out what’s really going on would be to remember the moment right before the moment right before you got angry. What happened? Think about it. Okay, let’s say you have road rage. A lot of people out there have road rage. Somebody cuts you off on the street. They get upset. Now what they do about it, that’s a whole other thing, okay? Some people pull out guns, whatever. I’m not talking about that. You have road rage, meaning somebody cuts you off, you get angry, okay? Remember when the guy cut you off. Right before the moment before you got angry, what were you thinking? “Not fair. Shouldn’t be happening.” Right. Excellent. So you have to figure out what that is. Everybody thinks differently. Not everybody’s the same. Some people think, “It’s not fair.” Some people think, “Who’s he?” Some people think, “Oh, you’re ruining my schedule.” Who knows? There are a million different thoughts that go through a person’s mind. You have to figure out what that thought was. Okay, so now you understand what’s making you get angry. It’s that thought process, okay? Why are you thinking that way? So you try to dig. Why am I thinking that way? A lot of times it comes from self-entitlement. “I’m entitled to be able to drive. It’s my road. Who are you to cut me off?” People feel that way. So now you know you have an entitlement issue. You feel entitled. Okay, getting somewhere. Why do you feel entitled? There are a lot of reasons why that could be. But you have to dig and see why you feel entitled. So go back to when you feel entitled and see what’s going through your mind the moment before that. You might figure out why you’re feeling entitled.
“Isn’t entitled just like you have to be humble and people just think everything’s coming to them?” Right. So most of the time, or a good part of the time, the sense of entitlement is going to be arrogance. So now you know the way to work on anger is to work on arrogance. Arrogance. You see? That’s how you dig. You dig. You see what’s really going on deep, deep down. That’s how you break me down. Very hard. The hardest part is the honesty. It’s brutal honesty, to really know what’s going on and not to sketch yourself. You’re not fooling anybody. You can’t fool God. All you’re doing is fooling yourself, and it’s going to do you no good. It doesn’t help you; it doesn’t get you anywhere.
Anyway, that’s all I say. Shalom. Utilize our differences. We’ll get back to it next week, maybe, B’ezrat Hashem (with God’s help). Shabbat Shalom.