Tzav: Keeping the Fire Alive in a Numb World

In this episode, I reflect on Parshas Tzav, Shabbos Hagadol, and the days leading into Pesach. I speak about the fire on the alter that could never go out, what it means in our own lives to stay alive and connected, and why numbness is often more dangerous than struggle.

I explore the idea of the ashes we carry from what we’ve been through, and how even what feels burned or lost still holds something holy. I also speak about Egypt as an inner state: the beliefs and patterns that tell us we are stuck, that things cannot change, and that this is just how it is.

This week is not only about waiting for miracles. It is about becoming someone who can hold them. I reflect on the role of women in redemption, and what it means to live with enough faith, presence, and openness to allow something new to be born.

If there is a place in your life that feels shut down, this episode is an invitation to return to your fire.

Lea

Subscribe to the More to the Story Podcast: www.youtube.com/@MTTSPodcast
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Listen to the More to the Story Podcast:
Apple Podcasts | https://shorturl.at/JtdA9
Spotify | https://shorturl.at/DF2Ro

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to More to the Story. I'm Leia Riboshkin Wolf, and thank you so much for being here this week to create the space for me to share on the parsha and the energies that are present in this week that I'm noticing. Today is Wednesday, tonight is Wednesday, and um we're going into Parsha, Shabbas Hagadal, the the week, the Shabbos before Pesach, and it's the Shabbas that blesses Pesach. And um on Sunday we have the birthday of the seventh Chabad Rebbe, our Rebbe, Anyur Al of Nisan. And um then we go into Pesach next week. So I feel like in this class I want to hold space for the energy of this week, Parsha Tsav, and uh the Rebbe's birthday and Pesach. And um we'll see what else comes through here. And before we start, I'm dedicating this week's uh learning to my dearest friend's mother, who had a yardsite a day of passing yesterday on Vav Nissan, and her name is Liby Fegala Malka Bas Avraham Mordechai. And she I never met her, and yet when I hear about her from my friend, I instantly feel my heart expand. And she's buried in Svah, in the our holy land, and I feel like you know, it being that it's her day of passing, and we have a war happening in Israel now, it feels really special to channel our learning through her. And may she be a true guardian and matriarch over her family and over our Jewish nation in this war for a complete victory and for like wonders and miracles as we go into Pesach. Oh, now I remember. Um it we're also in the month of Nisan, which is the energy of redemption and miracles. So that was the fourth piece that I was missing. Um I'll start with this idea. Um I'm gonna go, I'm gonna backtrack. When I when I opened up this week's parsha and I read, you know, what the topics and the conversations or the commands were in the in the Torah portion, um, I was looking for something new. And I saw that a lot of it was uh a repetition or on ideas and concepts that have already been spoken about in the last few weeks. And so that immediately tells me that we find ourselves right now in this energy of get things done, right? Right now on the calendar, we just finished or on the timeline, Moshe Rabbinu um is the Kohen Gadal, he is the high priest of the Jewish people. For these seven days after the Mishgan was set into place and ready to go, Moshe Rabbinu stood as our leader and as our Kohin Gadal. He was carrying this dual role. Um and being that in this week's parsha, he commands, uh Hashem commands Moshe to commit to command Arun, that Arun, you are the one that's gonna take this place and stand in this role. You are gonna be the high priest for the Jewish people. It to me the energy is like no longer are we talking and planning and thinking and dreaming and writing out the charts and getting the contractor to submit plans, like it's happening now. The energy that's available to us in this week is this masculine or I don't want to say masculine, it's probably like the culmination of the masculine and the feminine finally working together, and the baby can be born in this week. Like something could could come through down here in this world. And again, the theme of the Parsha is the Mishkan, the tabernacle, the place that Hashem was openly revealed down here in this world. And so I what I was feeling was um to to backtrack like how do we come to the Mishkan? Like, why is it special that we have a Mishkan? Because my my previous experience with learning these parsyos was like this was a boring parsha. Like I can zone out, I can check out, I can I can let my head understand this, but like my heart doesn't have anything to connect to here, right? When I learned this in school or was tested on this information, like there wasn't anything exciting for me here. I couldn't relate to this. And so when I asked myself, like, what's the what am I showing up with tonight? What am I gonna bring here? What happened to me was that I went back in time. And I went to Avraham Avenu, right? The first man who believed in God, who said, like, this is not all as it seems. There's a if I pierce through a veil, I can sense that there's a God beyond everything that my parents, my grandparents, and my society is telling me. And he found a woman. He was married to a woman who didn't think he was crazy and who actually joined him on the mission, right? What are the chances that this one man would have a woman to support him and and support him like fully? And yet she didn't, she was married to the only normal, healthy man, right, in her time. She had these conviction of monotheism, of exclusivity, of oneness, of spirituality. And yet, when her husband started to veer off course, she had no problem to jeopardize their relationship and say, no, this will not be done. She kept true to her values and she spoke up to the point where she was threatening Avraham, her husband's ear, right? That's what it seemed like. It was his only child, Yeshmaal, that was alive. And it was with this conviction that if God said that I will one day have children who will carry the covenant and pass on this message of holiness and of sacredness and of God is down here in this world, I will keep to it. And now this covenant gets passed on to the miracle child that's born, and it's Yitzhak. I actually remember learning, I don't know if this is correct, but it's coming to me now that the Akeida Yitzhak was sacrificed on Pesach. So we're coming to that energy as well. And the covenant gets passed on to Yitzhakh. And Yitzhak and Rifka have two children, one who lives in the light and one who likes to live in the dark. And again, this covenant is tested to which child will this pass on to? Will they be able to receive them? And eventually, right, it becomes clear to Rifka Yeminu that it's it's gonna be her son Yaakov. And all the forces fight against Yaakov from being able to carry, to hold, and to stay alive and to build a family that would hold on to this covenant, to this Torah. And they succeed, right? And it's like in every generation, it's like, will this light of God survive? Will it survive for us to be able to pass on to the next generation? And Yaakov goes and he has this tribe, and this little family is taken down to Egypt. And when they leave Egypt, which we experience in this month, they're no longer a family, they became a nation. One family was literally birthed and be under the harshest of like the Holocausts and every horrible thing that ever happened to the Jewish people. What became of us? We became a nation, right? Like that's what happens to Jewish people. When you repress us, our truth will come out and we will give birth to many, many, many children. And we go on, and this light and this hope and this battle to hold on to this spark, this Torah, gets passed on to this tribe. And um we go through hard things, but finally, finally, we come to the Mishkan. And the Mishkan is like fine to me, it's like Avram Avinu's the promise that God made to Avram and to Sarah and then Yisak and it finally is um here. It's right, it's birth, it happened. We're looking at it. We're in the parsha where it's like if your spouse or your parent like promises you something for how many years? How many years can you believe in it? And how many years could you work for the dream? And finally, finally, it's here, it's right here in front of us. It to me, it like the promise has finally landed. God is down here in this world, and it says that if you would go into the Mishkan, there was there were things that happened in the Mishkan that proved God was real because nature was like overridden, over override by holiness and godliness. And some of those things were when the fire would come down to consume the carbon, it came down in the face of a lion, the shape of a lion came down. Or if you were, if you would see the the logistics of the Koda Shakhtashim, the holy of holies, proportionally it was impossible to make to add up, and yet like witnessing that phenomenon made a person believe, like, wow, God is in charge of nature. And never mind like the entire energy of that tabernacle, when you showed up into that space, you were immediately elevated to this. Like if you ever like went into a holy space before where like your breath is taken away, and you're just immediately like, what is this place? Where am I? Right? Like that was the energy of the people who were operating the Mishkan, and so you immediately came into this space of holiness, and you you were God was finally down here in this world. Um in this actual parsha, the elements that are discussed, the points, I'll go through them because when we speak them, their energy gets channeled down here into the world. So they might feel dry, and do your best to just take them in and know that on some level, when you learn basic information and alaka, there's use for it. And even when you can't understand it, on in some way in inside of you or at some point in the future, this is the answer to one of your prayers. It's a key to unlock your door. And I'm saying this from like, I remember learning certain um rules that were given over the laws of um menorah lighting for the holiday of Hanukkah. And I was thinking, like, wow, that's so dry, like that's such a basic halacha. And soon after I learned that, I was in like a open-hearted space. I wasn't on medicine, like in a medicine journey, but I was in a very, very, and the awareness of what that meant like came to me. Like there was a hidden gem inside of that piece of Torah. And I was like, oh my god, halakha is like stripped of of juice, of flavor, of, but it it's really like pointing you to something so much deeper and so much greater. Um, like obviously, like the mysticism and the chasidis, and like that feels so powerful and um it feels more um exciting and and full of energy, and yet, and the halacha m speaks more to the intellectual mind, but if you if you hold it with reverence, I feel like for me in the past I've had experiences where like I was able to find a lot in them. So we'll go through them and um we'll talk about it. So the parsha is sav, which means command, and Hashem tells Moshe to command to Aaron and his sons that they are going to be the ones to orchestrate Hashem's ceremony and rituals in the Mishgan. Now, the reason that Aaron had to be commanded around this was Aaron was in a, it says a downhearted, depressed energy because he felt so um low that Hashem and Moshe, his brother, were disappointed in him because of his role in Khitaegal, the golden calf. And Moshe had confronted him and said, like, how did you do this with the people? And Hashem had he felt that Hashem was disappointed in him, and so he was holding on to that pain and to that, I don't want to say shame, but to that heaviness of that. And so Hashem tells Moshe, you need to be the one to persuade Aaron with loving words and with promises of what this role would be for him, and to draw him into desire so that he should want to step into this role and into this place. And so that's what Moshe does. And um I'll share this here. I didn't, I don't know in what order I want to share things today, but it's coming here, so I'll share it here. When I was going through like this parsha, and you know, what do what does this parsha mean to me beyond the details? I was feeling like, okay, if I put aside all these, you know, parsha facts that I'll share now, who am I connecting to in this week's parsha? And it's Moshe and Arun, right? They're the people behind this parsha. We have Moshe who is standing as the Koin Gadl and the Rebbe. He's like straddling both worlds for us. And then you have Arun, who was the loyal, wise older brother of Moshe. And it says that Arun merited to wear the Urun Vitumim and the Khoshan Mishpat, like two of the garments of the high priest. One was a direct way to communicate with the divine. You asked the questions, and literally things would start lighting up. It had a secret name of God slipped inside of the breastplate with the stones and the letters, and you had direct access to God, and he merited to carry that on his heart because when Hashem told him, or he found out, that his brother would be the one to be the leader of the Jewish people, his heart rejoiced for his brother. And so the heart that rejoiced for the good of his brother, he merits to carry these precious garments on him. And it says about Aron, he was married to a woman named Elisheva, and he was known as somebody who, it says, O Ev Shalom, Virodifshalom, he pursued peace and he chased peace. He was known as like the peacemaker in the camp of Israel, in the tribe of Israel. If two friends were having a fight or getting into friction with each other, he would run after and find out the details from both sides and do everything that he can to broker peace between them again. And so you have this great brother, the leader of Moshe Rabinu, who is just trying to bring peace and love and harmony between the tribes and between the people, and he's the one that's chosen to become the Kohen God or the high priest of the Jewish people. And I what I'm getting to is I listened to this class by YY Jacobson maybe a few years ago, and he was talking about how it specifically had to be Aaron, who was the one to bring everybody's sacrifices, because Aaron knew what it meant to sin. Because he was the one that had been involved with Khita Ego, nobody can have shame and say, I can't show up to, I'm gonna be judged if I show up to bring a carbon for this all this sin or this guilt offering that I did, right? And so when the leader himself can say, I'm not above this, I I went there too. I know what it means to go to the dark, I know what it means to forget God or to panic or to it we actually know that it says that Aaron was buying time, right? He didn't fall for this belief that his brother wasn't coming back. And so his sin is not the sin of the Jewish people at the golden calf. He had a different sin of maybe not being the leader that was needed in that moment. But because he was a part of that entire experience, he was able to carry and contain the shame, the pain, the embarrassment of the Jewish person that would show up with their sacrifice later down the line. And um it feels like you know that he had to become a container for all that energy, and the only way to become it is to go through it, right? And so after Moshe goes through this inauguration process, ultimately Aron is the one that becomes the person to meet you when you come and you say, I screwed up, I messed up, I forgot I was in a marriage, I forgot that I'm in a relationship, and I need to make it right again. And so I need to draw back the energy that I let spill to the other side, or that I I literally brought to the other side. And I need I need your help to help me bring that energy back to where it belongs. And he was there to help us with that process. Um, okay, now we'll we'll go back into the parsha. The carbon olah and the parts of other karbanas that go on the mezbeach burn all through the night. And we're told in this week's parsha that a fire had to stay burning on the mezbeyach throughout the entire night. It was never allowed to go out by night and by day. There was actually three different fires on the outer mazbeach, and specifically one of them, or maybe all of them, had to be constantly burned. And each fire was used for a different purpose. One burned the actual animal that was brought on it. One was used to light the wicks of the menorah. They would come and take the fire from the altar and then go light the menorah. And another one, I think, was used to burn the Katoras, the incense offering, on the small altar that was deeper inside of the of the sanctuary. Um and for me, I was thinking, you know, what is this idea that the fire could never go out, right? There always had to be a fire on the Mizbayach. And I was trying to ask myself, like, what does that mean in my life? How is that a practical instruction for me? I remember my um my husband, I think it was on his podcast with Ellie Nash, or maybe it was a different podcast, where I heard this idea where if you have two people, right, one person is numb and they're disassociated and they can't be excited about life or about making money or about anything. And on the other hand, you have a person who is alive and they're passionate, but they're pursuing, God forbid, dark things or inappropriate things, or they're chasing lower vibrational things. Who would you rather be? You know, you're the therapist, you're the healer on the other side. Who will you have a harder time treating? And the answer was, I think actually this might be Dober Pinson also says this, um, it's much more difficult to work with a numbers, a disassociated person, than it is to work with someone who is passionate and alive, even if they're pursuing dark things. Because this is the teaching in Chasidis, the Rebbe says that if somebody is alive and their fire is burning, their engine is going, their foot is on the gas, right? They're going into the wrong neighborhood, but all you have to do is to help them turn the wheel to come back into the light. Whereas if you have somebody who is so shut down and so just excuse me, so disassociated, you have the work of getting them back alive again, to get that passion and to get that movement, to get that literally like there's a shutdown, there's valves in their system that have been shut down, and to bring that back to life is like literally triya samisim, it's bringing back the dead to become alive again. And um, practically for me, um I thought to myself, like if I truly want to take lessons and direction from this week's parsha, then I would sit down and I would write a list of things that keep my fire going, right? What are the things that make sure that my fire keeps going? What are my um triggers or what are my vulnerabilities that I can hold space, like try to meditate and with prayer and say, like, God, please show me what are the steps that that I that lead me to numbness? What are the steps that lead me to disassociation? If you can track your progress of like, okay, last week I noticed I had such a down day, and it wasn't like a sad down day, it was a numbed, sad day, right? A down day. And then go through, like, did I hang out with certain people? Did I not hang out with enough people? Did I not, right? I'll work in the positive. Track your process, or I'm gonna please God, track my process and see, you know, what may have led to numbness or shutdown and disassociation. And on the flip side, what can keep my fire burning and going? And it can be as basic as exercising, eating healthy meals, drinking clean water, stretching, journaling, acknowledging my soul inside of me, praying two paragraphs in English, calling a mother, calling a friend, reading a book, right? Everybody has their different basic needs that can keep them going. So I feel like to keep the fire going, we need it's more than just basic, but at the very, very least, get curious about what you're a creation of God, right? And you know, let's say you're looking at flowers. Flowers need water and they need a vase to hold them in. They have basic needs. If not, they won't stay alive. Like there's nothing shameful about having needs. And when you can r realize like I am a creation of God, I have needs, and it's about time that I know my needs. And to know them like in a way where The piece of life can't make me forget them. They're written in front of me. I feel like we have this belief like things that are important are always going to stay at the front of our minds. Like we're always just going to remember them. But there's a reason why Torah is written down for us. There's a reason why things are documented in front of us. Because life happens, energy moves, and we do tend to forget our be our very basic selves. And so to somehow like frame a love letter to yourself and have it on your nightstand to remind you, your dresser, your vanity, whatever it is, of this, you know, this is who I am, and this is what keeps me going. This is my form of water and oxygen and soil. Um so that was what's speaking to me. Okay, in the parsha, it speaks about this concept called Trumas Hadeshan, where every morning the cohen that won the lottery to do this task would come into the holy, the sanctuary, and they would shovel out the ashes from the center panel of the altar. The altar was very big. They were able to stand on it. And so he would climb the ramp, go on it with a specific shovel that was designated for this job, and he would shovel the center panel from the ashes that were that had burned there. And it's it's this idea. Um okay, I'll finish the thought and then I'll share. The the teaching is that he took this pile of ashes and he um took it off the Mizbayah, the altar, and he put it next to it on the floor. And he left a remainder, like two strips on each side, that stayed there, and when that ash pile reached a certain point of like beyond a certain level, there was another process that another cohin would do where they would lift off all those ashes, collect them, and take them outside of the camp of Israel to pour them into like a specific location that was marked holy, not next to a cemetery or not next to any impurity. They were considered sacred. Um and I I I don't know where I heard this, but again, maybe it's from the same teaching of Rabbi YWA years ago. It's like if you take fire and you take wood and you burn it, what's gonna happen? You're gonna be left with ashes. You could never destroy a creation. There's always gonna be a residual that remains. And to me, these ashes are like the witness, they're the testimony. They stand witness to what went down on that altar. And it to the fact that there's like this holy procedure and ceremony around the ashes where like they're designated in a holy spot, and there's a Kohen won a lottery to perform this. What speaks to me about this is very often parts of us got destroyed or burned, really, really hurt, sacrificed on an altar. And there there are experiences that lead to, like, you know, memory shutdown, disassociation. Like, I it's not safe for me to retain this information. This information has to die. It will be buried in the dark. But it always is true that there are ashes that remain from every sacrifice. And eventually you'll be able to come back to the ashes and they'll be able to bring you back to life. They'll be able to, again, this concept of triya sam, these ashes are being held inside of you in a specific location outside of the camp. But a cohen brought them there. And the Kohin brought them there with so much reverence, with acknowledgement, like this was a sacred part of the carbon, the carbon services, right? It wasn't just like the trash that you took out and you threw somewhere, and it's like, okay, wherever the trash went out, these ashes went out too. Like these were very, very much a very, it has a neme. It's called Trumasadeshan. It's there's a ceremony around the ashes. And my feeling is that we all carry ashes inside of us from different experiences that we're too big to contain. Different parts of ourselves that got sacrificed along the line. And, you know, my my prayer and my hope is that while we speak about it in this week's parsha and we stand in the month of miracles and redemption, that anybody who is holding a jar of ashes can find the strength and the courage and the permission to bring those parts back to life, to bring those parts out of disassociation and to bring them back into the fire that has to constantly be going to stay alive with them. Okay, then this parsha goes on to talk about a kartman mincha, which was the grain offering. And, you know, it was often known as like the poor man's offering because it was made out of grain and not animal, right? If someone couldn't afford to part with an animal, which was their property, their assets, everything was in animals back in the day. That was the currency. Um, a person was, no matter what their financial situation was, everybody was equally welcomed and demanded that they show up to talk to God, to have this one-on-one time with Hashem. And so they brought a karban mincha. And the Kohin Gadal, which was which was Arana Kohen, he himself brought a karban mincha every day when he started his service. And this was like on for two reasons to show everybody like I'm not above having to bring a sacrifice. Everybody here will have experiences in their life that are going to warrant them acknowledging where they fell short or where they want to thank Hashem, right? And so Arun made an example of himself by bringing the Korban every day. And additionally, he already apologized for like inadvertent sins that he may commit while he stood as the leader of the Jewish people, with that humility of I don't I don't know that I'm always going to get it right, and so I will step forth and I will atone because I'm I'm carrying the weight of the Jewish people on my shoulders. This was an interesting detail. It says that while the Kohanim would slaughter the animals if blood sprayed out of the animal and landed on their clothing, because there was this law that everything connected to the animal that was designated as a karban was holy, and it had to be eaten and sacrificed in very specific locations that were determined as holy, you couldn't leave the holy place with your stained garment because you you have holy blood on your garment. And so you the Kohanim were instructed to launder their clothing within the confines of the sanctuary, because no part of any of holy blood can leave the sanctuary. Like all of you, your blood, every the mistakes that happen, all can be held within the sanctuary. And then we have a detail talking about you know the vessels that held the carbon, right? If you put the fat or the oil or the blood or the parts of the animal that were in a pot, and the pots were used for the carbon, they had to be cleaned out in a certain way. And this was a new detail in this week's Parsha. It says that when a person wanted to give things to God, they also booked their appointment and they showed up at the at the sanctuary. And there were four specific criteria, or not criteria, there were four specific events that would happen in a person's life that were like deemed, like make sure that you come and talk to God about what you went through. And so one is if you crossed an ocean on a voyage, you made a voyage where you went from one side of the ocean to the other. When you returned safely, you would show up with your carbon tot to thank Hashem for your safe travel. The next one was if you crossed a desert, if you had traveling that took you through a desert and you came through, you would show up with your the your gratitude to God with your carbon. And then the last two are if you were held in captivity, you were captured as a prisoner, um, and you made it out alive, upon upon your return home, you were you were invited to talk to God about this experience and to give thanks. And the last one is if you were bedridden for three days or more for an illness that you experienced, when you recover, you come to talk to God about this experience of illness that you had and to give thanks for your return to health. Um there's this idea that the animal that you sacrificed had to be burned within a certain amount of time. So if there were leftovers and the Kohain or the offerer brought it and they didn't finish eating it by a certain time, the remainders had to be burned and the energy had to go back to God through the smoke and the fire. And if you had an intention, like a kavana, while you were slaughtering the animal that wasn't aligned with the carbon, there were two instances where it wouldn't matter and your carbon would still be valid, and then there were other instances that would literally discredit your thoughts and your your desire for your animal, could literally discredit your sacrifice from achieving what you wanted. And this just highlights the idea of like how powerful our thoughts and our words actually are. That we literally steer energies and gifts just by thinking and speaking words. Like that is the power that we carry inside of us. Um and the last few points here are the transferring of energies that can happen. If you have a carbon that touches something impure, it becomes impure because the energy gets transferred over, or vice versa. If you have something that's holy and then it touches like a designated sacrifice that is holy, its energy would transfer and make something else become holy. And the ramifications for that are foods that are designated as holy needed to be eaten in a certain way, with certain intentions, in certain locations. And so it was very important to know what was touching what, right? And that this idea is like who are your neighbors? Who do you spend time with? Energy transfers. When you are in a dark space and when you are not doing well, when you bring that energy into a circle, it can transfer on to the others, right? Or the opposite, when you are doing really well and you are in a good space, your energy spreads forth and you become this generator of light. Um, and I don't think that people who are in a dark space should um like treat themselves as like this pariah and not allow, but it's just the awareness, just by noticing your own mood and not being um blended with it, just like noticing, like, wow, I'm carrying something very heavy today, literally already sets boundaries around it. So now you are conscious of it, you are the mother to that emotion. That emotion is not an abandoned child running around your home looking for its mother because you already separated yourself to witness it, and you literally actually become the womb, and yet you bring this scared part of yourself into the holding of a womb so it can like really come back to life again and be held and repaired. Um, and so I guess that's that's like highlighting this idea of coming out of survival mode to wreck like reckon with the energies that are moving through you, acknowledge how you feel. Take the time to realize and pause and say, like, wow, I'm treating my child so short-tempered today, like what's bothering me? Like, that's usually my like indicator that I'm so not aligned. It's like my child will ask me for something, and I'll like look back and be like, How am I speaking to them? Like, where's my love? Where's my patience? Like, what's going on, Leia? Like, usually it's like those, you know, can you tie my shoelace, right? And how do I feel when they ask me that three times? And often, especially in the last few months, I'm noticing like that was the stop sign that stopped me and said, like, you cannot go on in your day. Something is bothering you, it's impacting the way you're mothering your children. And it's time for you to drop in and breathe some awareness into your being. Like, you can't be operating go, go, go, do, do, do, because you're not a safe person right now. Um, or your spouse talking to you and what comes out of you, right? For for me, it's those two are my biggest reminders to like really check in with myself and see what's on my heart. Um, okay, the last ideas here are Hashem made a rule that certain the fats of certain animals were not allowed to be consumed even privately. We're never allowed to eat those, and then we're never allowed to drink the blood of certain animals or birds. And the Torah finishes off with more conversation about the karbanshlamim, the sacrifice to God that went up in its entirety to God. It was burned completely, no parts were left over. And the last section of this Torah portion speaks about how Moshe was the one that led seven days, Shivasi Mehamiluim, the seven days of inauguration, and ultimately he brings our own and our own sons, his nephews, his four nephews, into the divine service. He teaches them how God will be treated down here in this home so that the Jewish people can be in service of God and be held by God down here. And that's where the parsha finishes off. And um I'll go into some ideas that are talking to me here. Actually, before I go into the parsha ideas, I skipped this um at the beginning and it's it's bugging me. So maybe if I backtrack and I bring it in, I'll um I'll come back into flow. Um this week, this Sunday, I guess it's Saturday night and Sunday, is Yunal If Nisan, which is the birthday of the Rebbe. And I know that I'm not giving a class on that, and so I'm not prepared to talk about anything of that sort. But it does feel like a huge opportunity is coming, coming at us. And in the last year, I've been so like really captured and taken with the birthdays and the days of passing of our um our great leaders and sages and our family members in a very new way. And actually, someone here tonight shared this, it shared this idea so beautifully. I hope it's okay. I'm gonna share it, and if not, we'll edit it out after. Um, when you're in your soul space, you can actually communicate with people who are in their soul space. And I feel like those words are just such a simple way of putting it. In our lives, we mostly operate from our survival self, from our ego, from our human self, from our our Nefesha Bahamasitz or Hara parts, our survival template. And slowly, slowly, as we become more and more redeemed, we're switching over and we're becoming more godly messianic beings who operate from our soul. And I feel like one of the many gifts that our our great ones and our leaders offer us, and especially the Rebbe who pushed this message again and again, he said that there's no such thing as a tzadik dying. And he pushed this idea, and I feel like he was actually leaving us. He was talking about the sages, but he also told us, Ba'am kha kulam tzadikim, our entire nation is a nation of righteous people. We are all righteous, we are all tzadikim. So everything that he said about himself is true about us. And he was telling us that there is no such thing as death. Death does not exist. A day of passing is actually a day of greater and greater and greater ascent, where the spirit, the person is now like redeemed to be in their full, full soul space. And the offering for us, all the people who are left here who love the person so dearly, it's like believe in the love that you have for them, believe in the power of that person, and know that the just their soul alone, and then pile on top of that all the good work that they did in their lifetime, all the joy, all the light, all the mitzvos, right, the impact, the sum total of the impact of their lives, and then you only have to imagine how powerful they are in the spiritual realms. And all it takes for us to be in connection to those people is for us to come into our soul space. And when we are in our soul space, there is connection, there's signs, there's communication with the spiritual worlds and the spiritual afterlife. And I I feel like, you know, the Rebbe the I know it's the Rebbe's birthday, but I I it feels appropriate to talk about passing because I feel like, you know, when Gimal Talmus happened, when the Rebbe quote unquote passed away, he was telling us, guys, I taught you everything that you need to know to connect to me on a spiritual plane. And I'm waiting for you all. Switch over and live from your souls. You want Mashiach? I taught you how to go into your soul space. You you love me, you care about me, you need me, you you can't live without me, right? So many people feel that way. And so if if we truly, truly feel that way about our loved ones, and we pray for Triya Samisim in every one of our Amida prayers three times a day, and it's a constant, if you ask most people, like what are you looking forward to in the messianic time, they'll say, I want to be reunited with my loved ones, right? And that's literally the leverage. It's our leverage from God to say, come out of survival mode. The minute you come out of survival mode, you have communication with a soul, because you're in a soul, and two souls could communicate through anything. I'm feeling it on my heart as I'm speaking. And so, you know, the day of the Rebbe's birthday, it's literally the day on the 11th of the month of miracles, like the Yur Aleph is known as God's Day. And the the number 11 has this, like, this holiness of perfection and of godliness. And I don't know all the Kabbalah around it. I know that my mom is born on the 11th, and so it's I've always known that it was a special and holy day. And then you have the Rebbe born on Yer'alif, and he's born in the month of miracles and in the month of redemption, and he's born four days prior to the holiday of redemption and miracles. And there is no doubt that he is our Moshe Rabbinu. Our Moshe Rabbinu was born four days before the holiday of redemption, and he's born literally to lead us out of our exile, out of this generation, of the final, final, final exile for this generation to walk our way into redemption. And um, I'll share personally this idea because I don't even know where to begin in my gratitude for the role that the Rebbe has played in my life and in my journey. Like he was he was the place that I went to with information that there was, I didn't know who else to turn to. Like I didn't, I wouldn't tell my therapists because I felt like it's not fair to infect their minds with certain content. Like they have to go home to a wife, to a husband. I only my therapists were women. They have to go home to husbands and children. It never and and probably there was a part of shame. Like I was literally too ashamed to share certain details of my journey, and so I I wouldn't tell them all the details. But I would, I would, I would have this battle inside of me, and ultimately I would write it out to the Rebbe sometimes when I was on medicine, sometimes after, and I would go stop by the OL after or on my phone. I have it as a save tab, write a write a letter online to the Rebbe, and I I always address the Rebbezin and the Rebbe. I know that they're one being and they're one soul, and so that's how I address my letters. Um and I would I would cheer, and I so often the Rebbe found a way, the Rebbezin found a way to communicate with me that they got my letter, and that I'm held and I'm received, and I felt it, and I felt their, I feel they're they're rooting for us, they they live through us, they live with us, they're here to guide us. Um I'll share uh two ideas. I I I knew I was gonna share one idea, I didn't think I would share the other, but I'll do it. Um about a year ago, I was noticing that um I was being called into prayer. Like I kept hearing this idea of Leia, you need to dove in. Like I pray from my heart. I pray, right? And I love, I actually love praying, especially at the shoal at the House of Moran Chavez. Like it's my favorite shoal to be in, and I have like the most, thank God, thank God, incredible dovinning. And I it comes very like I love to pray. And yet there was something in the way of me praying on a like during the week on a daily basis. And amongst that was I don't get a lot of free time as a mom with young kids. And so if I did get 15 minutes of uninterrupted time, it was personal, like I really, really needed that time. I needed to be able to answer emails, I needed to be able to communicate with friends who I hadn't answered in a week. Like every one of my minutes are accounted for and so precious. And so, you know, there the the halacha is that moms of young children are not obligated in prayer. And so I felt like, okay, neither am I, right? The the the the the ruling is. That if you pray from your heart to God and you verbalize or you feel like God, please help me with a specific need, that is how a woman who's raising children in those years of her life, that's how she achieves prayer, and that's considered the commandment that you fulfill, that you step into connection with God. But I kept having this, like, my subconscious was communicating a message to me of like, Leia, pray, pray, pray. I was going through a very hard time. And finally I got the hint, you know, the penny dropped, and I realized that what I could achieve in prayer would really, really help me. So I would drop in and I would pray. It's very hard for me to pray in short, because once I started, I'm praying in English, I'm praying in Hebrew, it takes me a while. But I worked with what I had, and I would like powerful clarities and movements were happening. Like they were literally like I was battling an energy. The battle would happen within the prayer, and then I would come out of it and I would be a different person for my my children, my myself, my home, my husband. But it was there was a lot stopping me. Like it was hard to get me there. Like whether it was my kids not having a settled morning or finding the time or resistance, even from my own animal soul, not wanting me to have a showdown with the energy, because it would prefer that I be stuck in that cycle the whole day. And um, I wrote a letter into the Rebbe about something, and um I don't always open letters of the Rebbe after I write in because sometimes I would just want to wait and see how the answer will come to me, and I don't like chase the answer. It's like I surrender the prayer and I let life bring me the answer. But this specific time I chose to um open to go online and like it opens a random page for you, and the Rebbe wrote the a letter to um a chairman, somebody in some important position. And at the end of the letter, the Rebbe wrote, or maybe it was the whole letter, like P. S. Although I don't, it's not my custom or I don't usually ask people for birthday presents, I will take the liberty of asking you for a gift in honor of my birthday. Being that you are a person that's carrying, that has to make important decisions that will impact the Jewish community that you are a part of, I can if I can please ask you to take a few minutes every day to pray, to put, to fill in on your head and to pray. And um what I understood was to bring alignment between your head and your heart. And I looked at that and I was like, wow, like that the Rabbi's asking for it was brilliant because the way the Rabbi was phrasing it was like, if you can't do it for yourself, please do it for me, right? And that's how I felt. I'm like, okay, the Rebbe's asking for a gift. This happened this year. Um, and I'm reminded I'm being reminded of this gift that the Rebbe is asking of me. And so I'll I'll step back into it with this further commitment of taking this back on myself and please God to be able to do it more daily than I have been. Um, but I it was just like it was such a brilliant way for to like penetrate my own blockages and my own walls. And um, what I took from it, like I don't know if it was like after when I meditated with it, or or maybe the Rebbe's words, very often my prayer is like, may my mind and my heart work together. Very often our minds are like controlling us, they're in like this afraid ego. Let me see what I have to control. And so it's really, really difficult to be a heartfelt person who feels passion, who feels open-heartedness, who can feel divine energy if you're in your head. And the idea of praying is like you bring yourself back into balance. You bring your heart and your mind to equal playing field. It's the same idea when you immerse in a mikvah where you lay flat, where you take your head and you say, as great as you are, you're actually on equal playing field to the rest of my body. When you lay down flat, like your womb, your heart, your mind, all of your being is now equal. There's not one ruling over the other. And I feel like that's the main idea or one of the ideas of prayer for me. It's like even if I can pray, that's what I pray. Like, please, Hashem, bring alignment and open communication between my head and my heart and my body. Like let everything come into a healthy balance so that I can step into my day with openness. Um I was gonna share another idea. Um, I'll share it. It's also a story of writing a letter to the Rabbi, so that's why I was reminded of this. So I a few years ago, um, a healer in my life, Nahama Kaplan from Svah, she'd been working with me for some time. And one day she sent me a link and she said, Leah, you need to listen to this podcast, this class. And it was a Shir by Rabbi YY Jacobsin, and he was a seven or eight part class that he gave on a one mimer. It's actually a short mimur, but he gave many classes on it because it's so it's such a rich discourse. And that it's written by the Tsemach Tzedek, um Menachemendel, daughter of Rabitsundvorilea, Reb Menachemendel. And in that mimur, he speaks about this idea called um Bior Rishon and Biorashini, like the first round of elevation and the second round of elevation. And what I understood, there's so many ways that you can take it, but just for this idea, when we're doing healing work, there's the work that we can achieve on our own in like the first round of healing, right? It's what I have control over. I can book an appointment with a yoga therapist, I can come to a cacao ceremony, I can have a therapy appointment, I can exercise, I can eat nourishing foods, like those are all within my, hopefully within my circle of choice of what I can do. And that's what I can gather up in Biorishon. And then the Tsamaserak says that what you can achieve in Biorishoun has a glass ceiling, and ultimately you have to bring all of the energies that you accumulated and gathered together to be elevated, and you hand it over to the masculine or the rebi, and or Yosef Hatzarek was used as the example, and then Biorshini has to happen. And only what can happen in Biyorshini cannot happen in Biorisho. You cannot achieve on your own what you can achieve when you show up to your leader and you say, This is what I have been working on. I'm handing it over, I'm ready for it to go through its next round of elevation. And I I in this last month I noticed a character defect come out in my parenting. And it was really, really bothering me. I'm like, I am so off-kilter, this is so not okay. I was like, it was a big, big deal to me. I was so bothered by it. I I was even thinking like maybe it's time I'm being called into another medicine journey because this is not, this is not in alignment with who I am. And what's and um I was writing in a letter to the Rebbe for a specific thing. I don't know if someone asked me to write in for them, or my husband and I had to make a certain decision financially around the business dealing, and I write in before we make decisions like that for a blessing of clarity and for blessings to come through with every one of our decisions. And I included in at the end of the letter, I had like this debate with myself like, should I include this here, should I not include it here? And ultimately I wrote in. Like, I'm writing in as a mother, and I'm noticing this part of myself come out. It was, and I'm I pray for clarity of like what is getting in the way or what's causing this to happen. I I wrote it at night, I clicked send, I woke up the next day, and I was a different person. And I waited the entire day. I'm like, how am I so calm? How am I so present? How am I so and I went the next day, and then a few days later I realized, oh, I wrote in to the Rebbe and the Rebbezin about this part of myself. And later that night I was talking to my husband and I told him what happened, and I started crying while I shared it, which for me right away is my indication that my heart is like my inner child, my heart, like something truthful is happening inside of me because my inside world is communicating with the outside. And I said to my husband, like, I forgot. I forgot that I used to include and turn to the Rebbe and the Rebitzin for almost every detail, for so many of the important details. And I had been literally circling and circling and circling a chamber again and again and again that I had graduated from, it seemed, but I forgot that after I achieve great heights on a certain theme, I need to bring it to my leader, to my my redeemer, my my Rebbe, my reb, like my maternal, like my womb. I don't know, I don't know. And this brought me into like such clarity and such a reminder of I'm not doing this on my own. I'm doing this in connection to them. We are one unit. We go into the dark and we elevate sparks, and our our leaders are waiting with open arms to hold us after, and they're rooting for us, and they want to guide us while we're in the dark. And so long as we keep our one eye on them while we're in the dark, we keep the channel open for the wisdom to come through. They'll come and find us if we leave the door open. And even more than that, for me, it was this like coming back to of I'm gonna be writing in more, please God. And I know that a lot of resistance like comes up and says, no, you don't need to write that, you don't need to bother them with that detail. And it's like this for this journey of like, I don't need to and I'm going to anyway. Like these are my values, these are my standards. You can come and harass me all day long, but I'm committed to this, and I won't stop. Like to take that on as like this, these are the values that I live by, and so come what may, I'm determined to uphold them. Um okay, so that's my my what's on my heart around going into the Rebbe's birthday. And um I'll bring this into the idea now of Carbanos and Mitzrayam. I'll I'll go into first um mitzurayim and then I'll conclude with a deeper concept around Carbanos. So it's it's uh we're in the month of miracles, the month of Nisa and the month of redemption, and we're approaching the the Parsha is gonna be read on Shabbos Agad, the great parsha, the great um Shabbos, that's what it's called. Of all the the weekends of the entire year, this one is called the Great One. Why? Because on this week's part, like literally on the Shabbos before we were redeemed, God came down into Egypt, into the darkest place in the world, into the most perverted place, and God himself struck the firstborns. And what God was showing was that he was going after the strength of Egypt, right? The firstborn represents continuity and strength. And Hashem was saying, your enemies, the strength of your enemies will go down, and I myself, I will personally take you down. And the Rebbe has so many teachings on like the greatness of this Shabbos and what it could achieve, and how Shabbos literally blesses the entire week, and how this week's Shabbos is gonna bless Pesach. Like all of the blessings that you want to achieve and feel on Pesach, have them in mind when you light candles and throughout your Shabbos because whatever you're present to on this Shabbos, you're literally downloading, pulling down energies from the spiritual realms to flow into your week, which this week it's gonna be Passover Pesach. And so you can be this literally draw down that what you want to experience on Pesach on this upcoming Shaviz. But I was thinking about that, like what does it mean? Like we're in the month of miracles, that it's the great Shabbos. Like, I know that there are miracles of epic proportions happening in Israel, right? If you pay attention to the war, you get to witness the miracles that are happening. But on a personal level, like what does that mean for us? What can we expect and want and go into? And my my feeling here was like more than it is telling us about God and the Torah, it's really inviting us to do something epic, right? It's the great Shabbos, it has the power for these insane, wondrous miracles that we'll never forget, even the time of Mashiach, we'll never forget the miracles of Mithrayam. And I feel like it's telling us if we want great things, now is the month, now is the time to do big things, to confront big things, to open yourself up as wide as a miracle that you want. And it's not necessarily this like top-down, like here I am, I'll wait for the miracles to come to me because we're in the month of miracles. It's like, please, God, let me harness the energy of miracles and show up to you in a way that blows my own mind. Let me shock myself with how much I love you. Let me shock myself with how an amazing of a mother I'm gonna be this month. Let me shock you with how I want to rewire my entire system. Like you are the miracle, and what miracles do you want inside of you? And to me, it starts with a prayer like, God, I want this miracle to happen in my being. I want this to happen in my home, I want this to happen in my marriage. Help me, help me perform these miracles because I honestly feel like the miracles come to those who are willing to be the miracle. And so it to start with this prayer of show me how to capture a miracle down here. Um I'll go into the idea of mitraim now, talking about miracles. And I I know that you know we're taught mitrayim is an actual location and Paro is an actual person, but because we're in the last exile going into redemption, we're doing the same work but on a more refined level. Paro is not a king outside who lives somewhere. Paro is inside of us. Paro is the king of our survival template. He is the king of our ego, he is our animal soul on the throne of our heart, right? And he is in charge of belief systems. And in Egypt, what we're we're so blessed to be living in the time we're living now because we're left with all these codes. We're left with all this information to help ourselves. And what do we know about Egypt? We know that there was a caste system. In order to be a king, you had to be born from royal blood. If you were born middle class, you died middle class. You never were able to become an entrepreneur and make it out and show your family a greater way of living. If you were born a slave, you died a slave. There was no movement. Everything was set in stone. You there was no change. And what does that tell us? That we literally have parts in ourselves that are locked in prison, they're locked in an exile. We have certain beliefs inside of ourselves that paro, our ego, is in charge of. And it's telling us like, no, no light will ever come to that part of you. No, no, change is not possible for that part of your life. That relationship or that talent that you didn't get to develop as a child or that boss that is such a negative source in your life, but no, it's never possible to get a new job or for your spouse to get a new job, right? There are literally parts in us that do not believe in miracles and they do not believe in change. And that is a dictator living inside of you. And you have we have this holiday coming to us and telling us that that is not the truth. That is not a system that you should allow to live inside of your being. That is not something that you have to surrender to. Every single part of you gets to live in hope. That is the definition of a Jew. Maminem Bene Maminem, we are believers, the children of believers. Belief is what belief runs through our blood more than anything else does. And so if there is any situation that you feel stuck in or trapped in, the energy to open yourself up to and to demand that it penetrates your whole being is that everything can change and everything will change. Um other things that I wrote about Matrayam. I was writing here how you know, why wouldn't a person want to confront the power inside of themselves that tells them, my child will never get over this habit that's horrible for them, or right, my the schooling for my kid will never get better, or whatever the situation is that feels like it's a perpetual source of negativity in our lives. It's because it's so vulnerable to be a believer. And specifically, I feel like, you know, believers are always mocked by intellectuals who say, like, oh, you believe in miracles? Like, how how naive of you, how childish. Oh, you still live in like fantasy dreamland where things can become better. Like you have like these scientists or these intellectual people who like live from their mind and they walk around the world and they give off this like impression, especially like cynical people or older people who who no longer less can be connected to this young believer part in themselves. And I I know in my own childhood I had a few people like that circulating my life, and they constantly like they put my back against the wall of like, should I believe or should I not believe? Should I believe in miracles or not? And it was this like we're oh, so it it really made me feel like I to choose to believe meant that I was also choosing to be naive. That's how they it got um positioned in my mind. And um now I know that to hold a part of me that's worried about being made a fool, right? To hope for something and then for it to not come through feels very, very foolish. And for me to be able to keep those parts alive is to know what my inner parts are going through and to be aware of it and to choose to hold them so that they could stay open in their belief of miracles. Um other things that we that we know about Mitzraim are they believed that nature would rule their life. The Nile River was what gave them water, the sun gave them energy. Everything was dictated by nature. There was no higher power, there was no God. And there's parts of our own self that want to believe that too, right? Like we're only gonna be what what whatever the reality is here, that's what our life is, that's what we're stuck with. Um the other part here is that the Egyptians forced us into labor, where we no longer had any independence of our own. We couldn't choose how to spend our day. It was forced labor that we were brought into. And that's when our ego takes such control over us where it will tell us what we're eating, because it's consumed with what our body weight should look like or what our image should look like, before we'll be able to have a conversation with our body and say, what do you need today? What are you craving today? Oh, you're lacking nutrients of calcium, like, okay, go have that great yogurt for you. When when choice, it's in Hebrew, it's bakira, when bakhira is taken away from you, when you are what working on autopilot with another part of your body making the choices for you, that is an Egyptian template taking over your system. And the work of redemption is to know that you are entitled to bakira for every single part of your life. You are entitled to choose, to stand in front of things and say, Do I want to do this or do I not want to do this? Nothing has the power over you to tell you what you need to be doing. You have a right to constant communication to the divine, to be able to ask yourself, what do I want to cook for Shabbos? What do I want to, do I want to go to that outing? There's no, there's nothing that's forced and imposed. You get to choose your values and live up to them. And when you do notice that you are being controlled, the first thing is to notice that and to know like that's a foreign entity growing inside of me. Like that there's a mold here. And I let me pray to God and say, like, I'm noticing this lack of health operating in my system. Please, I pray to you to be able to move this in a healthy way and to show me how do I become more whole. Um, and then the the last part here I have about Egypt was that it speaks how Paro had this decision that he made that he would go after the boys. Every boy that was born, he literally wanted to murder, and all the girls that were born, he wanted to force into um assimilation, right? And to force the girls to take on the latest trends that were happening in the Egyptian culture so that their soul was left drowning but remained alive, right? Parts of them died because they were being severed from their traditions and from their godly source, and yet they were forced to literally be zombies, the walking dead, right? Where they couldn't have their souls being nourished by truth, by love, by light, by choice, by Torah, by family, and instead they were forced into this. Egyptian culture that was the opposite of the tribe that they come from. And all of this is leading me to this point that we'll finish off with today. We'll finish today off with this idea that the Rebbe and the sages say that the exile of Egypt happened in the merit of the righteous women. And the current redemption will also happen in the merit of righteous women. And so there's this huge responsibility and knowing that we have as women that something has to come from us for us to become redeemed, to redeem our families, to redeem our communities, to redeem our commu our nation and the entire world. And what what I'm noticing, what's speaking to me about this, we're going into the holiday of redemption. The messianic time is described as the time when the feminine energy will rise, when the energies of the feminine will dominate. It will be a teras byla, it will be the crown of her husband. So a crown, the head, right? The crown is worn on the head. So you have the masculine's head, the husband, but you have femininity crowning it. The woman will be the crown of her husband. And the teachings that I've seen show me that the Rebbe is saying that the character traits that women possess, of gentleness, of a deeper level of faith and connection, of a heart-centered presence, of taking somebody into their being, right? Like being a friend to hold another, of birthing, right? Containing energy. When something uncomfortable comes into your life and you don't react to it, but you say, if God sent that to me, I can hold that. I can contain that. I am mature enough, brave enough, have enough faith to hold that information and trust that God will send me the message of when to release that. It's like this, it's this very mature feminine move where it what comes in doesn't automatically go out. Children are not meant to hold secrets. Women are able to contain for 10 months before they birth a baby. Shabbos is the container for the entire week. She receives from six days, she waits and waits and waits and waits. And finally, when it's complete, she births and she allows Shabbos to come forward from the feminine. So, more specifically, when you hear something uncomfortable in your marriage or from one of your children, to know to presence and say, I have faith that there is light that's going to come with this piece of information. I will hold this. I call God, please help me hold this and let it incubate inside of me, let it fom in my being and not run to go tell someone about it. Or let me bring God into this. Let me trust that God is literally inside of me with this information and to pray for the next step to reveal itself. And there's something very, very powerful that happens when God is your partner with things that are challenging. You literally birth redemption. You birth the outcome that you would hope to happen for your child with that story or for your spouse or for yourself. I feel like that's one of the ways that you attach redemptive energy to the challenge you have by like letting it be inside of you, with you, with faith. You can talk to it. I see you inside of me. I feel really anxious that you're there. I really want to dump this onto someone. I'm holding you. I see you. I'm praying for you. Help is coming with this. I'm not advocating that people should repress and not talk to their friends about challenging things. I'm talking about two completely separate things, right? What I'm saying is to realize that you're a woman now. And as a woman, you have discernment inside of you. More than your friend has information or your mother or your sister, you have a piece of God inside of you that wants to attach to this part of your life. And so before you go and you hear from another woman's intuition or from your therapist's intuition, give your own intuition time to wake up to the situation and so hear from yourself with it. And then from there, you can bring it to the next place because we're supposed to share. We're not meant to carry things in ourselves. But I feel like you literally train yourself to be aware of I'm no longer a child. I'm a woman now. I have a womb. My womb will hold. Children also have a womb, but you have a mature womb that could birth the outcome that you were hoping for by presencing with God inside of it. That was a tangent that I was getting to. I was saying that the woman is the crown of her husband in the description of Mashiach. And the teachings of the Rebbe tell us that the men and the women are gonna have to tap into feminine energy and to feminine traits in order to be to birth the Mashiach time frame. And so what I'm thinking about that specifically around this holiday, my mind went to the last holiday we had, which was Purim. And Esther, a woman, was the star of the show. And she's actually the only female leader we have who served in such a public way that we have so much information about her. And so everything that we need to know about feminine redemption, we can learn from Esther in this last, in the last holiday that we have. And Perim and Pisah are like five and a half weeks apart. And so I feel like there's it's really important to link the two holidays together. And more than that, every Shabbos, when we say goodbye to Shabbos and we thank Shabbos for coming, we say a line from the Megillah, right? We say, um, now it's gonna go blank on me. Umsa ora basimcha vasasan vikar keintia lano. And it the line means by the Jews there was light and joy amongst the Jewish people, and so may it be for us. Every single week we don't realize this, but as I've been connecting to Esther and Mordechai and the story of Perm in the last few weeks, I became really excited to realize that we tap into the holiday of Perm every single Shabbos. Before we are ready to say goodbye to Shabbos, we bring ourselves close to Esther and Mordechai and to the miracle that they achieved for the Jewish people, with the Jewish people. And my mom told me a few years ago that she learned something by one of the Chasidic masters, and they said that pay attention to the story of Parim, because it is through the Megillah that we will learn how to redeem ourselves. And so I'm coming full circle here. And I'm seeing that in the merit of the women we're going to be redeemed. So, what does that mean? What can we, what can I learn from that going forward into this holiday? And what's standing out to me is that women are known for relationships, right? Men have historically men were powerful through money and through fear. If you do this to me, I'll chop your head off, right? How many leaders cut their wives and their daughters and their sisters' heads off? They were just beheaded. This tyranny, this dictatorship, this I'm not saying all men, male leaders were like this, but I'm saying that we know of a lot of male authority, and so the unhealthy version of male authority was tyranny and fear. If you don't behave, I have power over you. You have no rights of your own, and so I can do with you as I please, and so you better be in my good graces. The other way is through the healthy way of I take responsibility for you, and you feel that. You feel that I care about you, and so you surrender your power to me. And there's an energy exchange that happens when a nation says, You are our leader, we literally give a certain power from our portal, from our body to you. God sends that to the leader, and now the leader is carrying all of our power. It's like a channel from every single Jew or person goes through and is fed into one being, which stands as the leader. And then you look at Esther and in general what the female does. And the female is known for cultivating relationships. They have this power of friendship, they have this power of connection, right? That's the role of the mother in the marriage and in the with her children also. She has this ability to nurture and nourish connection. And when I look at Esther, I see that you couldn't, God was not even written in the Megillah because Esther was such a genius at relationships that the miracle looked like it happened supernaturally. It didn't even look like a miracle. And how, like I'll go through the story very quickly and point out to she won over Akoshverosh's grace by her humility, by channeling holy pure energy. And then when she is in this relate, she has somehow she has relationships with two males, um, I forgot their names, maybe Hagai, um, two men who ran the f the female quarters of the palace. They wanted to take care of her every need. And they helped her, they sent clothing to Mornachai. They did as she wanted because she was such a she was friendly, she was a good person. She had these seven maids that kept her secret and that she was able to work with that she was a vegetarian because she was keeping kosher. She managed to have relationships wherever she went, and ultimately she invites, how does she bring Haman down, this dark, horrible, like demon energy? She invites her husband to a dinner, a wine tasting party, right? She uses food, she uses material worlds, she uses a man's appetites, and she reveals the godliness, she harnesses the power there. And there's this whole explanation of how she plants seeds in Akashvirush's mind by inviting them to this exclusive party of like, why is my wife inviting me with another man to this party for two nights in a row? Right? After the first party, Haman Akashvirush is left with like, what was that? She didn't even ask me for anything. Like, what was the point of that delicious wine and cheese that I had? Nothing was asked, right? So she's like working her, she's working his curiosity and his intrigue, and also his like, what's happening here? He's a little on edge. And then she says, My request of you is come to another party. And then when she comes to this, they come to the second party, and she slowly leaves indication that there's this evil man that is coming after me, right? And it's leaving this breadcrumb trails for him to become very suspicious that another man is after his woman and his wife. And ultimately, Haman falls onto Esther's bed to bed to beg for her to like protect him. And all Akashvirosh sees is another man feels comfortable to sit on the same bed as my wife. And his wrath explodes, his like um territorial energy comes forward, and he feels like this man has some sort of desire for his woman, his wife, and he sees like red and he becomes extremely suspicious. And so in one instant, his ego comes forward and he says, this man is go behead him, right? And he makes that decision really, really quickly. What I'm getting to is this idea that Esther was a master of relationships, and that is one of the reasons that I'm seeing that you don't even see God down here. And you don't see God written in the actual story because she reveals the God within the physical. She reveals how every single person has a piece of God in them. And we can pray for a miracle that happens top down, right? God, please find a channel to take care of me. God, please. And I'm feeling for myself, I'm speaking to myself, that a huge part of my redemption will be to come into a room and to realize I'm surrounded by six pieces of God right here in this space, and to bow in recognition of that is godliness, you are godliness, you are godliness, and also like this awe of look, what did you do to keep this piece of God inside of you? Because we've been exiled, we've been on the run for so long, and there's this like you you had to work really, really, really hard to keep yourself alive and to get through what you got through. This like humility and this awe of the human part of you and also the godly part of you. And to to allow for the miracles to happen through people, through relationships. Um, I hope my point is coming through. For me, that feels like that's my work here. Very often I just turn to God, right? I turn to the rabbiam, I turn to prayer, I turn to tahilim, I turn to ceremony and ritual while I'm making khala, and I have an open channel there. And I know I know that a lot of my work is pointing me in the direction of opening up with people and becoming one nation again in this in this recognition of who we are and in allowing miracles to happen through people. And so I'm I'm coming with this, you know, learning from last part, last holiday, and knowing that if God wants to rain miracles down on our people this year, please may it be. Like in in the most wondrous ways. Like my that's my hope and my prayer. And if Hashem is saying, open yourselves up and become the miracle, my prayer is for me and all of us to be able to heal the fears and the pains that we experienced in relationships where we really got so hurt by other people, and it's easier and it feels less scary and painful to just, you know, be a little bit more introverted and to be closed off. Um, for me, it would be very redemptive if I was able to open my heart back up fully. Like obviously, I have my moments and I have my experiences of being open, but to literally live with an open heart towards with all people, um, I feel like that would be a huge redemption. So that's my what I'm taking from this parsha and from my prayer going into this upcoming holiday. Thank you so much.