 I want to begin tonight by sharing with you a parable that was taught about 300 years ago by the founder of the Hasidic revival in Judaism, the Baal Shem Tov. He would often tell the following parable. He spoke about a musician who was once playing a very, very beautiful melody that had a wondrous rhythm to it and it had all the sweetness of the world. And those people who were in the room with him were so captured by this beautiful music that they were jumping and dancing with incredible joy. A deaf man entered the room and he saw all these people frenetically running around, jumping up and down, doing some results and he assumed that these were people that were insane. He thought he was in the Clark Institute. He couldn't imagine what are people doing like this, running around, jumping up and down, going in circles. And the Baal Shem Tov said that the problem obviously is that he can't hear the music. He can't hear the music. Judaism has a music that can be heard when you begin to study its depth and you begin to experience it. You can actually hear the music of Judaism. It doesn't often come through just by reading about Judaism. You actually have to taste Judaism. Just like you can read many wonderful books about Prague or Vienna, there's nothing like actually going there. I happen to be a chess player. You can read many, many books about playing chess. So nothing compares to actually playing the game itself. Now while there is a music to Judaism, it is Judaism's interface with the realm of time that reveals its rhythm. So Judaism has a music all to itself. But if you want to pick up the rhythm of Judaism, you have to see how Judaism interfaces in the realm of time. Now this complex rhythm of Judaism operates on many, many different levels. For example, last week we examined prayer. So the day in Judaism, every day has its own rhythm. There's the morning prayers, there's the afternoon prayers, there's the evening prayers. And this rhythm pervades the day. There's a feeling and a sense to the morning and to the afternoon and to the evening. And it changes, the mood changes during the day. And then during the week, the rhythm of the week is that we have six days of work and then the Shabbat. And this rhythm goes throughout our lives. Six days of the work week and we have the Shabbat and that's a rhythm. And then we have the yearly rhythm. During the course of the year we have all the Jewish holidays and the holidays punctuate the year and create the rhythm of the year. And then Judaism has a rhythm of seven years because every seventh year we have what's called the Shemitah, the sabbatical year. This year is a sabbatical year in Israel. But that was part of the experience of Judaism as you'd go through a daily rhythm and a weekly rhythm and you'd go through, actually there was even a monthly rhythm. Every Jewish month had a special flavor and color to it. So there was the rhythm of the months and then there was the whole rhythm of the year punctuated by the holidays. And then the years were punctuated by the sabbatical year every seven years. And then if you live long enough, God willing, you have every fiftieth year, the jubilee year, the Yovel. So what we're going to try to cover tonight, I know it's a bit ambitious, I should get my head examined, but we're going to try to go through the cycle of the Jewish year beginning tonight with Shabbat. Those of you who've experienced Shabbat know that there's often a very frenetic rushing in the house to get ready for the arrival of Shabbat. But peace settles upon Jewish homes at the commencement of Shabbat. And it's a very palpable peace. The hills are lit and the home is saturated with peace and with holiness. Shabbat is actually a day that is so sublime and so magnificent that it's really not possible to capture it in words. I'm going to do my best. One word that's usually used in association with Shabbat is Shalom. Why do you say Shabbat Shalom? The word means usually peace, but it's an inadequate translation because we're not obviously talking simply about an absence of war or conflict. When we say Shabbat Shalom, we're not wishing people that there shouldn't be bombs falling on their house. It goes beyond that. Shalom, the word Shalom is related to the Hebrew word Shlemut. And Shlemut really speaks about wholeness and perfection and completeness, integration. It speaks about a time when all the pieces come together and work in harmony. They're in their right place. We sometimes speak about people who are together, right? Not that I'm talking about people together with each other. I'm talking about a person who is internally together, right? She's a very together person. And that's what Shabbat is about. Shabbat is a day when we become more together. We become more whole, we become more integrated. And it's a day of inner peace. Shabbat is a day of peace and harmony between man and God, between man and himself, between man and his fellow man, between man and the world of nature. Every element of the world settles into a experience and a feeling of peace on the Shabbat. Shabbat begins with two candles. We take two candles and we light them to inaugurate the Shabbat. But Shabbat ends by lighting one candle. But the candle has many wicks to it. And one of the reasons we do this is to show that over the course of Shabbat, everything has come together. We achieve unity and harmony and peace on the Shabbat. Now we all know that one of the most famous prayers or mantras in Judaism, you have to ask the average person, what is the main thing that Jews say? It's Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad. It's the Jewish declaration of faith that we believe that God is one. And obviously the first of the 10 statements, the 10 special commandments given at Mount Sinai, the first one is where God says, Anohi Hashem Elokecha, I am the Lord your God. So this, as we mentioned in the past, this is the center point of Judaism. The center point is our relationship with God. But one of the questions is how do we express our belief in God? I mean, Jews don't normally walk around saying, I believe, and I believe it's not what it's about. So we do say that, by the way. We have it, you know, sometimes, for example, we'll say the 13 principles of faith. I believe with perfect faith, but we don't do that all day long. And the question is, when do we get a chance to express our belief and faith in God and that God is real and that God created everything that exists? Sure, we believe that. So for most Jews, if you were given a test, right? So, no, what did Jews believe? A, B, do you believe that there's a God? Yeah, I believe there's a God. But maybe if we never got a test and no one asked us, it would never come out. That's where Shabbat kicks in. Shabbat, again, you think about it, it's every seven days. It's one seventh of our life. And the Shabbat is a 25-hour meditation. It's a 25-hour meditation where we testify that God created the world. That, in a nutshell, is what Shabbat is about. We know that the creation didn't go on endlessly. The Bible speaks about six days, whether it's 24-hour day period, or longer periods of time. It's not our discussion tonight. But the Bible describes creation taking place over the course of six days. But then God stops. Creation doesn't roll on endlessly. As a matter of fact, one of God's names is Shaddai, which is interpreted to mean Shana'i Mardai. He said, enough. He said, stop. And the world came to its conclusion in terms of the creative process. And then God placed human beings at the center of the universe. And God says, we're here, we're here to work the world and to guard the world. And we were given the responsibility and the privilege of being God's partners in the unfolding of the process that he began during the six days of creation. And just as God stopped after six days, that's what we do each week. We work for six days, and then we stop to testify that that's what God did. We acknowledge that God created the world. It's an incredible thing when you think about it. By us celebrating Shabbat, if we're aware of this, if we're conscious of it, what we're doing is we're testifying the 25 hours, I believe there's a God that created the world. The Torah doesn't only instruct us, or actually the Torah doesn't instruct us at all, to refrain from work on the Shabbat. That's a misnomer. The Torah doesn't say to avoid doing avodah. Avodah is the Hebrew word for work. The Torah doesn't say desist from avodah on the Sabbath. The Torah directs us to desist from melacha. Melacha is different from avodah, from work. Melacha is usually defined as purposeful creative activity, purposeful creative activity. Turning on our microwave oven or watering our garden are not necessarily laborious activities. It's not really work. But they certainly demonstrate our intelligent mastery over the created world. So by resting from these kinds of activities on Shabbat, by not building, by not changing, by not improving the world, we express our belief that the world was created by God. But Shabbat goes way beyond this. It's not only a day where we testify that we believe in God. Shabbat is a day where we go further and we realize our potential to pursue a relationship with God. That ultimately becomes the focus of Shabbat. It's a day where we can dedicate ourselves to intimacy in our relationship with God. A day where we can break from our mundane pursuits and focus on our inner spiritual life. We retreat from the workday to nourish our souls. We rest on the Shabbat from our routine activities and we create a space for God to be able to enter our lives. It's a day of spiritual rejuvenation. A day when we can spend more time in prayer and meditation. People have a hard time doing that during the week. We're rushing. Gotta get to work. So we pray, but it's not usually very relaxed. We don't really feel we have the time. On Shabbat, we have plenty of time. So we're able to dedicate ourselves and spend more quality time in prayer and meditation on Shabbat. On Shabbat, we have the time. We're freed up to be able to meditate and study God's Torah, which is critical to be able to have a relationship with Him. They say that when you study God's Torah, you're entering into the mind of God. You want to get close to someone? Try and curl into their mind. But that's what God did for us. God revealed His Torah that we can understand a little bit about Him. And the Torah has been described as a beautiful love letter that God wrote to us. And we don't write letters anymore, unfortunately. It's a lost art. But it was a time. We say a mold. It was a time when people would write letters, right? It's five, six, seven pages. My parents still have my letters I sent to them from Israel, these big, long letters. So people, if you're in love, you don't throw out a love letter. You cherish them. And you know what you do? You take them out and you read them. You might meet them once a month, five times a year, once a year, whatever it is. The Torah is a love letter that God sent to us. And we have a chance on Shabbas to read it carefully and to study it. During the week, what happens, unfortunately, is that our true identity often gets lost in what we do. Our true identities are obscured by our professions. People ask you, who are you? What do you do? I'm a doctor. I'm an accountant. I'm a lawyer. I'm a fund manager. We begin to identify with what we do. That's who I am. And on Shabbat, the external part of who we are is set aside. And our soul, the real I, is able to be given full expression. That's what we're trying to accomplish on Shabbat. We're trying not to become slaves to our work. Abraham Joshua Heschel, I mentioned him last week, wrote a wonderful, evocative masterpiece called The Sabbath. Very highly recommended. And I'm going to share with you one of his observations. Shabbat Heschel says, technical civilization is man's conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. Yet to have more does not mean to be more. To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space, we forfeit in the realm of time. And in the realm of time, the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but to be in accord. Nothing is more useful than power, but nothing is more frightful. We have often suffered from degradation by poverty. Now, we are threatened with degradation through power. Many hearts and pictures have been broken at the fountain of profit. Selling himself into slavery to things, man becomes a utensil that is broken at the fountain. Now, Heschel wrote these words back in 1951. I can't imagine him seeing today how dependent we've become to the very technology that we developed to serve us. When we cannot step away from our tools, we don't have them. They have us. Shabbat is a day where we don't have to jump when our phone rings or our blackberry beeps. Shabbat is a profound day of personal freedom where we proclaim that we are far more than our possessions. The purpose of Shabbat is not just to rest up physically so we can work more intensely during the week and become more productively professionally during the week. Rather, it's the other way around. The whole purpose of the week is to enable us to experience real life and real life we only experience on Shabbat. The patterns of these six days of working followed by Shabbat is supposed to teach us that even though we work during the week to be able to eat and to be able to pay our rent, that's true we need to do those things, we should realize that's not the ultimate thing that we should be focused on even during the week. Shabbat is supposed to impact the rest of the week. That's the purpose of Shabbat, that it should transform the rest of the week also. And we learn that during the week itself we should be dedicated to our inner lives. Sure, we have to work but the work doesn't have to overtake us and consume us. We should be dedicated even during the week when we don't have as much free time as we would have on the Shabbat but even during the week to carve out times for prayer, carve out times for personal growth, carve out times for Torah study, carve out times for pursuing a life of righteousness and kindness and serving others. This is what we can dedicate ourselves to during the week but the energy for that, the battery comes on Shabbat. And when you think about it ultimately this pattern of six days of working followed by Shabbat echoes something much bigger. It echoes the idea that the ultimate Shabbat will follow the days we're working in this life. All of us are here for 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 years, whatever it is, we work. We're here working in this world. We're putting this world, we're told, la avda uleshamra, to work this world and to guard this world. But then we have the big Shabbat which comes after our life. The rabbis teach us that Shabbat that we celebrate here is just a taste, it's a whiff of the ultimate Shabbat. It's a taste of the world to come. Rabbis call Shabbat main olam haba. It's a little bit of an experience, it's a taste, a whiff of the ultimate Shabbat which we'll experience in the next world when we're not bound by our physical bodies. And so when we think about this we live in a world now where the pattern is six days of going to work and the seventh day of Shabbat but that really reflects a bigger pattern where we have the work of this life followed by the ultimate Shabbat. And what we're supposed to understand from this is that the kind of life that we build for ourselves in this world will be the kind of eternity that we experience forever. The rabbis teach us that if you don't prepare for Shabbat in this world, it's hard to experience Shabbat. If you don't clean the house, if you don't cook, if you don't get everything ready you're not gonna really have a good Shabbat. So in the same way that the six days of the week is preparation for Shabbat to be able to experience Shabbat properly so the years we live in this life, the 60, 70, 80, 90, whatever it is is preparation for the ultimate Shabbat. So if we experience this life, if we spend time in this world dedicated to spiritual growth, dedicated to knowing God, then we're creating a fitting vessel. We're creating an appropriate vessel to bask in the spiritual bliss that awaits us in the next life. But if this life we're living now is only dedicated to pursuing material success, physical pleasure, and entertaining ourselves we're not gonna really be capable of experiencing properly what's awaiting us in the world to come. It's not going to be a big casino in Las Vegas after we go to the next realm. It's not gonna be lying on a beach in the Bermuda. It's a spiritual existence. And the only way we're gonna be able to experience that and enjoy it and benefit from it is if we prepare ourselves now. You know the Talmud says something interesting. The Talmud says there's a difference between a person that has worked on themselves spiritually in this world and a person that has not done anything to work on themselves. They say that when a righteous person dies it's like removing a hair from a saucer of milk. Right, how hard is it to take that little piece of hair off the saucer of milk? Because the person that's been working on themselves comes to realize I'm not my body. They don't become overly attached to their body. They understand while they're going through this life I'm a soul, that's who I really am. I'm a soul that is in a body for a short period of time. So the person that's worked on themselves spiritually it's not a traumatic experience for their soul to separate from their body. But the Talmud says that a person who has not done anything to grow spiritually in this world, so when they die they say that it's like taking a tuft of wool out of a thicket of thorns. Imagine trying to go to a rose bush and pull out a whole tuft of wool. It gets stuck there, it's not so easy to pull out and that's what happens. That soul is gonna be only able to come out of that body with great trauma. During Shabbat we stop our competition with others. We're not competing with others anymore on Shabbat. And peace pervades our relationships with others. We have the ability on Shabbat to spend quality time with our friends and family. You know during the week we're all so busy doing our own things, with our own schedules. You know many families don't even eat their meals together during the week. And many families that do eat together rush through their meals and are distracted by a television and so on or by their phones. And they don't really connect. On Shabbat people spend several hours at each meal. People often tell me they can't believe. You mean your Shabbat meals go for three, four, five hours? They can't imagine. What are you gonna talk about for so long? And how tragic it is that families can't spend three or four hours talking to each other. But what a delight to be able to spend quality time with the people that you love. Discussing important things, singing beautiful songs. People don't sing together now. You would think that someone was from a 50s musical. So I'm gonna start singing. But that's what people that are in love do, we sing. So on Shabbat we sing songs. Children are able to review with their parents what they studied and learned during the week. At the table we can speak about Torah and important issues and spiritual topics. And we're able to soak and bask in the beauty and the peace of the day. During Shabbat we don't even think, forget about not working. We don't even think on Shabbat about our work and our projects. As far as we're concerned it's all accomplished. It's all finished already. And that's the meditation of Shabbat. The meditation is to be able to focus on the delight of Shabbat in the present moment. Not to be worried about what's gonna be after Shabbat. On Shabbat we're required to allow our servants to rest. The Bible says that you have to allow your servants to rest kamochah like you rest. Like you're resting, your servants have to rest. But it's deeper than that. The Bible is saying that your servants are kamochah. Your servants are like you. Meaning that all of us, our human beings were all created in the image of God. There's really no ultimate difference between the master and the servant. So Shabbat is a protest against inequality between people. On Shabbat we're even enjoined to allow our animals to rest, to give them a chance to roam in the fields, not have to toil for us seven days a week. Even our animals are required to rest on Shabbat. And by not showing our creative mastery over the world, we acknowledge that God created it and that we don't own it. It's one of the big problems that we modern people have is that we think that we own the world. And Shabbat directs us to leave the world as it is. At least for this one day. Not to work it, not to improve it. And by learning that we're not the real masters, we're not the real owners, we learn to treat the world with respect, with care. The Midrash tells a wonderful story that when God created the Garden of Eden, he took Adam and Eve by the hand. The rabbis teach us, he took them by the hand and he walked them through the Garden of Eden. And God said, look at this magnificent world that I created. He says, don't mess it up because if you destroy the world, there's no one there to fix it after you. Now the symphony of Judaism has many other movements that create its rhythm, not just Shabbat. We're not gonna be able to cover all of them tonight. For example, tonight we're not going to be discussing the fast days or the two long periods of national mourning that we have in the Jewish calendar, one that follows Passover for 33 days and one that precedes Tisha Ba'av for three weeks. We're not gonna get to that tonight. You'll forgive me. One of the major movements in Judaism is the High Holidays, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. This is basically a period of time when we're dedicated to personal improvement and Tisha Ba'av. Tisha Ba'av means returning, returning to God and returning to our true selves. The 10 day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is preceded by 30 days. You just can't pop into a 10 day period of intense introspection and self-improvement. This is important enough to prepare for. In the same way, anything in life, a person's gonna get married, they don't prepare a week ahead of time. Weddings, you prepare for months ahead of time. So for the month before Rosh Hashanah, we spend every day of the month of Elul getting ready. We blow the show for each day. We say special prayers. We begin a process of introspection. And then we hit Rosh Hashanah. Think about the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. Compare Rosh Hashanah to January 1st. There's no greater contrast you can imagine. January 1st, you think of office parties with woo and silly hats and streamers and people getting drunk. That's January 1st. And what's Rosh Hashanah? You're sitting in a synagogue praying all day long basically. It's a very, very different experience of these two days. Why is that? Because when you think about it, a new year is very much like a birthday. A year has passed. It's a new year. The same way when you become a year older, what's happening is you begin to confront your mortality. It's a scary thing for humans to do. We don't like to think about the fact that we're not going to be here forever. So on a new year, when we reach another year, another milestone, people naturally, we think, oh, a year has passed. Not getting any younger. So the question is, how do you confront the passage of time? And January 1st and Rosh Hashanah have two different philosophies. January 1st was basically explained, the philosophy is explained by Epicurus, the Greek philosopher who said what? He said, how do you confront the fact that you're mortal? He said, eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow, ye shall die, meaning if tomorrow you might die, so have a big party today. Enjoy yourself as much as you can. And the Jewish philosophy is expressed by Rabbi Eliezer and Pirke Evoz where he said, repent one day before you die. Told the students, day before you die, you should repent. His students are very brilliant. And I said, yeah, but teacher, we don't know when we're going to die. He said, good question, grasshoppers. And that's why you've got to do it every day. Meaning that a true understanding of Rosh Hashanah, anything worth doing is worth doing all the time. Mother's day should not be one day a year. We do it one day a year, we focus on it, make a big deal. But really every day should be Mother's day. Every day we should be doing introspection and stock taking and trying to improve. But you go out of your mind if you did it every day of the year and you have so many other things to think about. So at least in Judaism we have a special 10 day period preceded by 30 days and there's where we focus on it. But that's a way of confronting our mortality. If I'm not going to be here forever, I better get my house in order now. Now why do you have these two different philosophies? I'm gonna propose that they stem from two different views of the world we live in. One view says that the world is basically a product of the Big Bang and the random collision of particles and atoms. That's how people explain this world. People say the world was not created by God. The world is basically an accident. There's no design to it. It's not here on any purpose. It's just the random collision of particles and atoms. In a world view like this, which doesn't acknowledge that the world has any intrinsic intended purpose or meaning, it makes sense. So why knock yourself out to figure it out? Have a good time, party. But Rosh Hashanah historically commemorates what? It's not a Jewish holiday really. Doesn't commemorate a Jewish event. Rosh Hashanah and the Jewish calendar commemorates the creation of the world. During the prayers on Rosh Hashanah, we say hayom harat olam. Today is the birthday of the world. So Rosh Hashanah, which marks the creation of the world, it's the anniversary, and it was created by God on purpose with a design, with a plan, with a goal. And that means that there's a design and a plan and a goal for every single person in the world. So it makes sense if we're here for a purpose and a goal, so once in a while at least, stop and ask yourself, how are we doing? There's a teaching in Jewish mysticism that the first time something happens in the Bible is the headquarters. If you wanna find out something in Judaism, find the first time it happens in the Bible. So what's the first question in the Bible? The first question is where God says to Adam and Eve, where are you? He created Adam and Eve and he told them what to do and what not to do and they disobeyed God and they got really freaked out and they ran to hide. And God says to them, where are you? Now obviously, God doesn't need them to say, oh, we're behind the big tree over there. God knows exactly where they are. So when God says, where are you, he's not asking for their coordinates. He's asking them, where are you in your life's journey? I put you here in the world for a purpose, with a goal, with expectations. How far have you come? Are you making any progress? And so really, Rosh Hashanah is the day where we think about this question, where are we in our lives? The shofar that we blow on Rosh Hashanah, this ram's horn that we blast 100 times during the day, is supposed to be a wake-up call because it's so easy in our lives to fall asleep, to go on automatic pilot, not to think about these questions and not necessarily comfortable questions. I'd rather just have fun. So Rosh Hashanah is a wake-up call. And Rosh Hashanah, the shofar, also reflects the main theme of the day. If you go through the prayers on Rosh Hashanah, it's interesting, you won't see anything in the prayer book. I'm Rosh Hashanah about my sins and my mistakes, and I'm sorry and forgive me. That doesn't take place at all on Rosh Hashanah. The whole day, the theme is acknowledging God as the king of the world. And the shofar blowing is a coronation, we're coronating God over our lives. We're saying, God, I want you to be the king over my life. And what happens during the prayers of Rosh Hashanah is we speak about what the world could look like. Look at the prayers, it's amazing. The prayers are all about an ideal world that can exist, a world where all humanity comes together, all humanity comes to recognize God, all humanity is living in peace. That's the messianic age. And that's what we describe on Rosh Hashanah because when we spend the day focusing on what our lives could be like and what the real life could be like, a life of being together with God, that should hopefully be a catalyst to get us to think about whether our lives are actually lining up with this. And then we spend the next 10 days. The next 10 days after Rosh Hashanah is spent now that I know what life should be like, how do I get myself lined up with that? Yom Kippur is misunderstood. People often think it's a very sad day, it's a very morose day. And what's strange is that we begin in a very unusual way. We begin Yom Kippur with Col Nidrae. Col Nidrae is one of those times during the year where people who never go to the synagogue, they will show up. It's like Spielberg's book for his movie, close encounters of a third, fifth, 10th time where these people are all, they're coming to this place where there's a mountain. That's what happens. People schlep to the synagogue on Yom Kippur and I feel bad for them in some ways because if I was gonna go one day a year, so go on a poem where people are having a big party. Go on Simchastoro where people are having a great time. Yom Kippur, they come and you call Nidrae what happens. So we read three times, a very short paragraph and has a very spooky tune to it. Col Nidrae. But I don't think people really know what's being said because when you read the words, it seems like a very dry, boring legal document. All it's saying basically is all the vows and oaths and promises and they have about 10 different Hebrew terms for vows, oaths, promises. All of the ones I took last year should be no one void and all my future oaths should also be no one void. That's it. And for that people get all excited. It's hard to understand what is the draw of Col Nidrae. As a matter of fact, I was told that about 60 years ago, the reform movement wanted to take it out of their prayer book because it seemed so irrelevant. And then it was a protest. How can you get rid of Col Nidrae? John Pierce would sing it, the opera singer. Every year on the radio he'd sing it, everyone would listen. So there must be something to Col Nidrae and I think if we understand that we understand what is the secret of Yom Kippur. Famous, I forget who it was now, I think it was Whittier, I forgot the author, said that the saddest words of tongue and pen are these. It might have been. The most depressing thing that people sometimes have to face is they didn't live their life properly. And we get very weighted down by our mistakes, by our shortcomings, by our transgressions. It's depressing. We begin Yom Kippur with Col Nidrae. What is Col Nidrae? We say all the vows that I took last year should be null and void. What's going on? In the Bible, there are many commandments that we have. One of the commandments is the commandment of oaths. When you make an oath in the Bible, it's not just a very casual thing. When you make an oath, what you're basically doing is creating for yourself a new commandment. For example, there's no law in the Bible which says I can't listen to music on the radio. Let's say, for example, or I can't wear makeup. You can wear makeup if you want. So for some reason, a person says, you know what, the radio's a waste of time. I'm actually gonna turn it off. I'm gonna make an oath that I'm not gonna listen to the radio anymore. Let's say a person says, you know what, I don't wanna be so caught up with the superficial how I look. I'm not gonna wear makeup anymore. People can take an oath. But the problem is if you don't keep the oath, you're now violating a law in the Torah. That's a big deal. And the rabbi has always said, you know what, if you're smart, don't make oaths. You don't need to get into the trouble. But what happens if you make an oath and then you come to regret it? After a month, you wanna hear the radio. After two months, you wanna put on makeup. So what happens? You feel that had I known back then what it would feel like now, I wouldn't have made the oath in the first place. So we have a procedure in Judaism called hattarat nidharim, the procedure of releasing yourself from an oath. And basically what we do is we appear before a rabbinic court of three men, or it could be one specialist, but you basically appear before a court and you express this. You say, look gentlemen, had I known how difficult this would have been when I did it, I wouldn't have done it. And they say, okay, it's cleared. Don't worry about it, it's forgotten. But the way it works in Jewish law is important. It's not that you have an oath on the books. The oath is on the books. And you're not gonna be held accountable to it. The way it works is that when you're released from the vow, the vow is retroactively abolished. Like it never was made. So why do we begin Yom Kippur with Kul Nidharim? Because we're invoking, at the very beginning of Yom Kippur, we're invoking the only example in all of Jewish law, where you can go back into the past and wipe out a past action as if it never happened. Now think about this. In our human relationships, if you insult someone or hurt someone, you can apologize and they'll forgive you, but you know they remember it. Even if they forgive you 25,000 times, they know that you did that to them. And it's a very big, it's uncomfortable. It's hard to be totally comfortable with someone that you really hurt badly. But when it comes to our relationship with God, what God is saying is, look children, if you really regret what you did and violating our relationship, if you really regret it, I wipe it out like it never happened. Imagine what a weight that is off our shoulders. That's why on Yom Kippur, you feel totally pure, totally clean. You were totally washed. That's how we wear white. If you go through the process of repentance properly, of acknowledging that we did something wrong, of regretting it, of articulating it to God, confessing it and saying, God, I know that I did so and so, making amends if possible, praying for God's forgiveness and then resolving to change, God says totally forgiven and it's wiped out. As a matter of fact, the rabbis teach that if you do this, not out of fear of God, but out of love of God, all of the things that you did wrong are now counted as a positive thing. Meaning it's not that the ledger goes from minus 20 to zero. The minus 20 becomes a positive 20. You get it, you're on the plus side. You're in the black, not in the red. So when you think about God wiping out the past like it never happened and the ability to feel incredibly pure and clean, that's amazing. But we have a problem. The problem is all of us have been to the synagogue before. Every Yom Kippur, we were there the previous year. And we say to ourselves, come on, can I really change? Is it really possible for me to be different and improve? And that's why Colnijere doesn't only speak about the past vows, but Colnijere addresses the future vows as well. It says not only will the past, the past vows be nullified, but even the vows I take in the future because Yom Kippur addresses the future as well. Because Yom Kippur says to us, you're not fasting on Yom Kippur because you're mourning for anything. It's not a fasting like Tisha Ba'av where you're mourning and you're sad. The fasting of Yom Kippur is a fasting of Simqa. It's a fasting of joy because you're saying to yourself, look what I can do. For 25 hours, I can voluntarily not eat or drink anything. That's not so easy to do. And what we're saying to ourselves is, you know what, really at the end of the day, I'm more spiritual than physical. I have much more in common with a spiritual being than with an animal because I can't control myself. So Yom Kippur says, you know what? Because you have so much spiritual potential, you have a right to reach very high because you can do it. And the Bible tells us that God says, you have the ability to overcome the temptation to do wrong. So that's why Yom Kippur's on a sad day. On the contrary, Yom Kippur, if you understand it, is the happiest day of the year. And that's why, for example, if you listen to the music, most Jewish music is in a minor key. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. Because we have a lot of service to deal with. But listen to the music on Yom Kippur. Listen to the vidui where we're hitting our chest and confessing our sins. And the tune is not a minor key, it's a major key. The chasan says, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, ay. That's not a sand tune, it's a happy tune. And if you're in a place on Yom Kippur, where the people that are there understand what Yom Kippur is, what happens the minute Yom Kippur is over, they don't rush to have the orange juice in the bagels. In a place where people understand what they just went through, people will dance after Yom Kippur. When I was in Yishvabi, we would dance for an hour. That's Yom Kippur and everything that it has to offer us. Another major movement in the Jewish year are what we call the Gimel Regalim, the Shlosher Regalim. The three pilgrim festivals. When in times of the Bible, Jews would go up to Jerusalem to celebrate these festivals. These festivals are also called Moadim, appointed times. Because as Rabbi Salvecic would say, it's a time when we have a rendezvous with God. That's what these holidays are. Passover, Shukot and Shavuot. These are three holidays that express three vital points in Jewish history. And what we do during these three holidays is we try to get very deeply in touch with these three critical times in Jewish history, not just by remembering these times, but by re-experiencing them and reliving them. That's the essence of a Jewish holiday. It's not just that we're thinking about something that happened a million years ago. We're now re-experiencing it in the present. Passover is so important for us as Jews because Passover is the source of our faith in God. When God introduces himself at Mount Sinai and says, Anokhi Hashem Elokechel, I am the Lord your God, he doesn't write on his calling card and I happen to have created the entire universe. That's a pretty big deal. Doesn't say that on God's card. The business card says, I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt from the house of slavery. Why does it say that, which is not as big a deal as creating the entire universe? Because the people coming out of Egypt didn't experience the creation of the world. But they experienced the exodus from Egypt. They experienced a year of dramatic supernatural miracles in Egypt. They experienced crossing the Red Sea. Our ancestors who came out of Egypt became electrically aware of God's presence. Because God revealed himself so dramatically in Egypt, even the Egyptians said, Espa Elokemi, it's the finger of God. Even the Egyptians saw that it was not, as Woody Allen would say, some cheap gizmo from Corvettes that Moses used to do the miracles. And when we cross the Red Sea, our rabbis tell us that even the most unsophisticated Jew had a clearer vision of God than Ezekiel the prophet. You read the first chapter of Ezekiel, he has this incredible supernatural mystical vision which is really mind-blowing. But the rabbis teach us that the simplest Jew coming out of Egypt and crossing that Red Sea had a deeper experience of God than Ezekiel the prophet. As a matter of fact, the Jews crossing the Red Sea, they said, Zek, hei, li, vei, hu. They were actually able to point as if they could see God. That's how clear it was. So every year we want to get in touch deeply with Passover. It's a source of our faith. But I mentioned previously that Passover is also the source of our entire Jewish ethical system. Because the Bible wants us to always remember how it feels to be a slave. You know how it feels. Don't you dare do it to someone else. So for us as Jews it's critically important to remember our experience as slaves and the fact that God took us out supernaturally. And so on Passover we change our whole diet. We take the whole house, we turn the whole house upside down. And we have a whole week dedicated to remembering and re-experiencing the Exodus from Egypt. We ate matzah in Egypt as slaves. And we stay up a whole night telling the story to our children. In the first person that this is what happened to us, not to them, this happened to us, to our family. And the Passover has its larger macro concept of freedom and liberation. But not just the liberation it took place 3,300 years ago. Mitsrayim Egypt also means constriction. And each human being has his own personal issues. All of us are constricted and subject to our own exiles, to our own Egypt, to our own slavery. And so the energy of Passover is the energy of freedom where God gives us the ability to liberate ourselves from our own personal constrictions. And then we go to the Halle of Sukkot. On Sukkot we're told it's a holiday of joy. Interestingly it's a holiday that takes place during the harvest season. You would think, wow, people would be really happy when they bring in all the harvest. And yet during Sukkot we don't stay in our houses, our nice beautiful houses. We don't look at our beautiful harvest crops. We leave our comfortable homes and we live in a little simple hut for a week on Sukkot. Because we wanna be basically living in a very simple way to show that all we really need to be happy is to have God. The Sukkot symbolizes the sanctuary where God's presence is felt. And the Sukkot symbolizes the idea, as the rabbis teach in the Talmud, who is really the wealthy person? The wealthy person is not the person that has five monster homes. Talmud says the wealthy person is the one that's happy with what they have. They're satisfied with what they have. Whatever they have, they're happy with it. And that's the holiday of Sukkot. On Sukkot we remember the 40 years that God attached himself, and we attached ourselves to God, coming out of Egypt for 40 years God fed us every day. And God gave us special water every day from a well. And he provided clouds that air conditioned us and protected us from the elements. We had a miraculous existence for 40 years. It was unbelievable. And during those 40 years we became very, very attached to God. That's what Sukkot is about. And then we have the holiday of Shavuot. Shavuot, the feast of weeks, takes place seven weeks after Passover. Because Passover was not just freedom from, but Shavuot teaches us that Passover was freedom too. There was a goal to the Exodus. There was a goal to the liberation. And that goal was to receive the Torah and Mount Sinai. So every year, seven weeks after we leave Egypt, we re-experience again the fact that God gave the Jewish people his Torah at Mount Sinai. And the custom is for us to stay up all night on the eve of Shavuot studying the Torah, showing that for us this is our lifeblood. This is what allows us to exist as a people. I'm gonna finish up with what are called two minor holidays, not minor at all. Purim, which is the last holiday that took place in the Bible, takes place 2,500 years ago in Persia, when the Jewish people are almost exterminated in a Holocaust. That was the plan, to kill every last single Jew, man, woman, and child. And we know that what happens is we're rescued. Mordechai and Esther, they played a starring role. But the real theme of Purim is that we go through our lives and we don't see God the way they saw God in the Bible. Every miracle story in the Bible, every holiday, was supernatural. The Exodus from Egypt, unbelievable. The templates, the splitting of the sea, Shavuot, they actually heard God speak at Mount Sinai. You can't get more godly than that. And Sukkot, the 40 years of miracles, every day in the desert, the manna coming down, the well of Aaron that they could drink from, the well of Miriam, and every ounce of their existence of 40 years was miraculous. Purim comes Purim, and we're facing a tremendous threat of extermination. And you read the story of Purim in the scroll of Esther, and what's peculiar about it is that God's name does not appear in this book at all. Interestingly, on Passover, when we celebrate Passover, we have a book we use called the Haggadah, and this book is missing a name. You go through the whole Passover story, Moses' name doesn't really appear there. Because on Passover, we realize Moses did not take us out of Egypt. God took us out of Egypt. We want to make it very clear. On Purim, we read the story of our redemption from this near Holocaust in Persia, and God's name is not mentioned. Why? Because it seems that God's presence is missing from the story. How do we get rescued? It looks like a lot of political intrigue. People just happen to be at the right place at the right time. The king can't sleep, and they bring in the book of remembrance, and they happen to open to the page, and you just, it's like a big Marx Brothers movie, where people are coming in the door at the right time, and it looks like one big story of coincidences and lucky breaks and serendipity, and boy, did we luck out that time. But the whole purpose of Purim is to really fulfill the name of the book. The book is called Megilat Esther, which is translated simply as the scroll of Esther. The scroll of Esther. But the word Megaleh in Hebrew means not just scroll, Megaleh means to reveal. And Esther is not just her name, Esther means hidden. And the whole purpose of Purim is to reveal that which is hidden. What was hidden in the Purim story was God. Nothing supernatural happened. And our job in the Purim story is to really take this lesson, which says, you know what? We don't walk around in our lives today and see God visibly. We don't have supernatural miracles. But we have to learn how to look behind the scenes and to realize that God's hand is really controlling everything that happens in the world. And because Purim was an attempt to destroy us physically, the celebration on Purim is physical. On Purim we have a party. People even drink and we send presents of food to our friends and neighbors. But it's a very physical holiday, which is not the case with Chanukah. Chanukah is a post biblical holiday. You will not read about Chanukah in the Bible. Takes place in the fourth century BCE. When there was no plan to physically destroy the Jewish people, it was more of a spiritual destruction. The Greek, the Syrian Greeks were basically outlawing Judaism. We couldn't celebrate Shabbat. We couldn't study the Torah. We couldn't experience Judaism spiritually. And that's why Chanukah, when we were rescued from this, we celebrate spiritually. We don't have a big special meal on Chanukah. I mean, you have to eat anyway. But the celebration is not through the meal. It's not through physical. It's not through eating. On Chanukah we recite special prayers of thanksgiving. And we light candles. That's the way we celebrate Chanukah. What is the theme of Chanukah? And with this I'd like to end. I think if you look carefully at Chanukah, there's a very, very critical theme. And it's reflected in a verse in the Bible. I think it's in Genesis chapter 37. I may be wrong. Which is telling the story of Joseph. And the Bible says, to introduce this whole story, Eila toldot Yaakov. These are the generations of Jacob. And then the verse says that Joseph was 17 years old when he got into this whole situation with his brothers. Now, when you read this verse, it's very strange because what the verse should have said is these are the generations of Jacob, Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, go list the children. Doesn't say that. It says these are the generations. This is the, these are the toldot of Jacob. And then it says, Yoseph, Joseph was 17 years old. Some of our Hasidic masters have read this verse in the following way. The word toldot doesn't just mean generations, progeny. The word toldot could also mean legacy. That this is the legacy of Jacob. What is that legacy? Yoseph. Not the name Yoseph, but the word. What does Yoseph mean? Yoseph means to increase, to go beyond, to do more, to transcend. And that, I believe, is the theme of Chanukah. Let me prove it to you. Chanukah, we celebrate the victory of the few over the many. The rabim beyad me'atim. So you had a small little group of Jewish men. They weren't even soldiers. They were old Yeshiva students. They didn't really have a professional army. And they were way outnumbered by the Syrian Greek professional army. And yet, this small group of Jews was able to vanquish a much larger army. They went beyond that which you would expect of them. They transcended what would normally be possible. And then what happens? They wanna dedicate the temple. It was contaminated by the Syrian Greeks. They clean it up. They wanna light the menorah because in the temple, they didn't just celebrate Chanukah in the temple. Every day they lit the menorah. Their menorah had seven branches. And they couldn't find any pure oil. The Syrian Greeks had contaminated all the oil. And then, thank God, they find a little jar of oil. The problem is that this little jar of oil should only last for one day. And the place where they can find new oil is a four-day trip away. But four days there, four days coming back, they're not gonna have any oil for eight days. So what happened? This jar of oil that should've only burned for one day, it went beyond its normal capabilities. It transcended what you would normally expect of it. And it burned for eight days. And then we have a whole discussion in the Talmud. How do you celebrate Chanukah? There's a big debate between the school of Shammai and the school of Hillel. Shammai said that you celebrate Chanukah by lighting eight candles the first night of Chanukah, seven candles the second night, six candles the third night. That was Shammai's opinion. You go from eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. And Hillel said, no, you increase. You write one the first night, two the second night, three the third night, four the fourth night, et cetera. So the Talmud says, Chanukah is you're safe, you're safe. The whole lake, you add, you increase, you transcend. And then we have another thing, which is amazing by Chanukah. All Judaism has a principle of Hidur mitzvah. Throughout Judaism, you're supposed to beautify the mitzvah that you do. Talmud says you have to spend a certain amount more than you would normally spend just to make something beautiful. You don't just buy an S-Rogh for Sukkot, you buy a beautiful one. You don't just buy a little Sukkot that's not so nice, you make it nicer. You buy a beautiful Talus. Everything we do out of love, we should beautify it. But Chanukah is unique in that Chanukah has a concept of Mahadrin minhamahadrin, no one else in Judaism, except it's a brand of kosher food somewhere, I think. But Mahadrin minhamahadrin means that we're super turbocharging the beautification of the mitzvah, how so? Because the Talmud says that really the truth is, you can celebrate Chanukah, the simplest way of celebrating it is to do one candle each night. That you could just celebrate by lighting one candle on the first night, one candle on the second night, one candle on the third night. That's the bare bones basic way of celebrating Chanukah. Then Mahadrin, if you wanna do it nicer, you should light eight candles, right? According to Shammai ate the first night and then won the last night, and according to Hillel, won the first night, ate the last night. But only one person in the household has to light all those candles. Mahadrin minhamahadrin, every person in the household should light their own candles. So we have the simple way of doing it, plan A, one candle each night, plan B, the head of the household lights, according to Hillel, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. According to Shammai ate seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. But according to the opinion of Mahadrin, minhamahadrin going beyond every person in the house lights the candles in ascending order. So you see how the Chanukah, everything is about going beyond transcending. I'll give you another example. There is a law in Judaism that when the community is ritually impure, the laws of impurity are basically ignored. So for example, you would only have to be concerned about pure oil. If everybody was pure, it would be a problem to use impure oil. But the principle in Jewish law is that if everybody is impure, you don't have to worry about whether the oil is pure or not. You could have used that oil. So why were they going crazy? Oh, where are we going to find oil? We'll have to go four days on a journey and come back. We're not going to have oil for eight days. After a war, where they were fighting in a war, the presumption is that everybody came in touch with a dead person. That's what happens in a war. Or in the same neighborhood, you touch people that are dead and that transmits everybody. It catches, so to speak, this ritual impurity. So the presumption is everybody after a war especially is ritually impure. So therefore, the truth of the matter is they could have used any oil they found. But they didn't want to do it in any way they could have gotten away with. They wanted to do it in the very most special way, meaning they went beyond what was required. They transcended the normal requirements. And then Chanukah is the number eight. It's all about the number eight. Eight is the number of transcendence. The Ma'aral from Prague says, number seven in the Jewish counting system is the number of the natural order. Seven days of the week, seven colors of the rainbow, seven notes at least in the Western musical scale. But seven is always a number of completion in the physical realm. And the Ma'aral says that eight is the number of transcendence of going beyond the physical. That's why the child is circumcised on the eighth day. That's why the book of Psalms speaks about the instrument that's going to be played in the Messianic age is called the shminit, the eight-stringed liar or instrument. Eight is always the number of going beyond the physical to the realm of the supernatural. And then finally the symbol of the holiday itself is the candle, the flame. Of all the things on planet Earth, everything by gravity tends to want to fall down. The flame is the only object that I know of. Maybe there's something else. Maybe smoke is true, but this is related to flame. Smoke and flame, but they strive to go upwards. That's a flame licks up. A flame is always trying to climb higher and higher. So the lesson, the message of Chanukah is a lesson of transcendence, of going beyond, of not being satisfied with where we are. And I believe that there are many, many lessons for us. One lesson is very simple. We learned this on Purim, the holiday of Purim. And Chanukah says to us, go beyond the level, which is very understandable. But there's a level which says, I will acknowledge God when I can see God. I think Woody Allen once said, if only God would give me a clear sign, like putting a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank. So that's what people often feel. I want to be able to have a sign. Let me see. I want a miracle. I want something crazy to happen. I want God to split the sea or turn the river into blood. And really, when you think about it, it's a very low level of faith. You know, it's like saying, I'm from Missouri, God, show me. You gotta show me. People that say to their, people that they're supposed to love with, I want you to show me that you love me. There's something problematic with that relationship. Purim is the holiday which says, we don't need God to split the river, split the ocean or turn the river to blood to see God. Purim says we should be able to go into the forest and sit by a very calm little stream and see the presence of God even where he's hidden. So that's one lesson of Hanukkah. One lesson of Hanukkah says, go beyond that very sad level where we say I have to have God show me. And secondly, Hanukkah is saying that in our daily lives, we should live lives of transcendence. We should never be satisfied with where we are. We should always be seeking to grow. If we've accomplished something, so go further. But we never should sit back. You know, one of the lessons we learned in the Bible, we're told that the altar in the temple, you could not go up to the altar by steps. The Bible says they built a ramp that they had to go up the altar by a ramp. Why a ramp and no steps? Because when you're going up by steps, if you get tired, you can stop. Take a rest on one of the steps. If you're going up an incline, you can't really rest that comfortably. And what the Torah is telling us here is that if you want to be a spiritual person, you just gotta keep on going. You can't stop. The Musur teachers would say, you have to be like a bird. A bird that doesn't flap its wings is gonna fall down. So the lesson of Hanukkah says, look, my children, God is saying to us, this is an important thing to do in life, to get close to me, to grow spiritual, to develop yourselves, to learn. And he's saying, never be satisfied. Constantly strive to transcend, to go beyond, to want more, to want more and more and more. Because if we want more of spiritual things, we're striving for the right things. One of the messages of Judaism is we shouldn't make our major striving in the world for physical things. The rabbis teach us that if you have 200, you're gonna wanna have 400. We're never gonna be filled up with physical things. Never, ever, ever satisfied. Never, ever, ever filled up. The only thing that will ever satisfy us is spiritual gains and spiritual accomplishments. That's really, I think, the major message of Hanukkah.