Emor: Making Room for the Parts That Cannot Serve

In this episode, I reflect on Parshas Emor and the laws of the Kohanim, the priests who were asked to live with a higher level of awareness, purity, and service.

I speak about the Kohen who had a blemish and was not able to serve in the same way as the others, but was still given a holy role through eating from the offerings. For me, this opens a deeper question about the parts of us that feel disqualified, limited, or wounded, and whether those places might still carry a mission of their own.

I also explore the festivals in this Parsha, the role of joy, receiving, marriage, safety, and what it means to create rituals that allow more light to enter our homes and bodies.

If there is a part of you that feels too blemished to belong, this episode is an invitation to see that it may still be part of the offering.

Lea

Below is the link to the series of classes on the Mamar of the Tzemach Tzedek taught by Rabbi YY Jacobson "Kohen Baal Mum”, mentioned in this week’s episode:

https://www.theyeshiva.net/jewish/category/1697/series/chassidus-morning-class-series/derech-mitzvosecha-kohen-baal-mum

Subscribe to the More to the Story Podcast: www.youtube.com/@MTTSPodcast
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to More to the Story. I'm Leia Raboshkin Wolf, and in this week's um gathering, we're going to go into the eighth portion in the Khlemesh, and the Parsha is called Parshas Emmer, which means to speak. God asked Moshe to speak. Um, I feel that Torah is alive when we allow it to be, when it enters into our being and we take it in in an open-hearted and honest way. Um, and we're true to the triggers that it brings up in us. That's how we we show up to the our relationship with God and say, Your words aren't landing in me. Can you please help me understand them? Or your words are landing, thank you so much. Here's the gratitude that I feel in my heart because of you. In in a conversation with anybody, with our spouse, with our sibling, or whoever we're working, we're in connection with, when something doesn't feel good, and we say respectfully, can we work through this together? That's how the connection is built and formed. And I feel like um that's the invitation to Torah so that it can be a living Torah, Torah Shaim, right? So in this space, like I would love for you to write down um what bothers you, what triggers you, what doesn't feel good within you. And on the flip side, anything that is landing. And um, if you're comfortable to be on on the recording, you're welcome to like um like flag me down and I'm happy to um ask you to share your question and then I can repeat it so the camera can um the recording can catch it. And if not, at the end, I'm so happy to um open it up and we can chat and connect over it, or if questions come up in the middle, like it's so welcomed and a part of the revealing the layers of this week's Torah portion. Um I want to again dedicate this week's learning um in the honor and the merit of my friend's husband, Shmuel Ben Bracha Tirtsa, to have an immediate and complete recovery. And um, to all those that need a complete recovery in every way, um, may they merit it and may the light that we generate from the Torah really bring tremendous healing for our individual lives. You can choose and ask Hashem to um channel the learning that you are giving to yourself and creating in this world right now in this week to a topic or a part of your life that can use some love and watering. Um, because you're showing up into a ceremony of Torah of like the deepest healing possible, and you are a creator of your life and you have influence over your life, and you can literally work magic and say, I'm I'm I'm choosing to spend my next hour in this space of life, and may it meet up and match up with my connection to my child, my connection to myself, right? To a specific area. Um, so it's the eighth portion, and um we're a few days before the full moon within the month of Ear. Right now we're in the month of Ear, which is Aniha Shemrofecha. I am a Shemir healer, and this month um doesn't have any holidays, and yet every single day feels like an opportunity because we're counting the Sviratha Umer in this month from Pesach until Shvuas. And actually in this week's Parsha, we are given the mitzvah of Shvuas, and we are given the mitzvah of um counting the days of Sviratha Umer. So it's um I'd love to mention that today is the 11th of year, which means that we have three more, two more or three more nights available to do Kiddish Lavana, which is the blessing that you can make on the new moon. On the first 14 days of every month, we have this mitzvah that to go outside and stand under the presence of the moon and bless it. And there's a beautiful, beautiful um three-page ceremony in this in the sitter. And um, I personally had like deep, deep connections to this, to this ceremony and this prayer because you know, after doing deeper healing work and turning toward God and saying, like, why do I need to do plant medicine to find you? Where are you? Where in my tradition, in the Jewish faith, where are these opportunities to meet you and to feel you and to be with you? And slowly the answers that came were so connected to the moon. It's actually this week's parsha, um, where we have this mitzvah around the Kohanim. And if they have a blemish on their bodies, they're not allowed to serve in the temple. And um, the tsamachedek has an entire teaching on this, um, and in it he talks about the moon, and that's where my connection to the moon like took off. And um, at the end of this, at the beginning of this year, I was reading a discourse of the Rebbe, and the Rebbe, this is what I heard. Um I'm paraphrasing in my own words, but the Rebbe said, like, if there is one mitzvah that you do, let it be Kiddish Lavana. That's how I, that's what I heard my soul. Like, that's what he said, you should go out in the most your beautiful clothing and turn it into a celebration and have like make an occasion out of it and go out with your family and your children and your um it should be like this great up festive opportunity. And I I've never um been able to embody that level of showing up to Kirish Lavana, but I'm sharing this here that if anybody feels called in the next two or three nights, there's a beautiful, beautiful prayer to say in English or in Hebrew in the back of the sitter, and it's an incredible mitzvah. And I I won't be surprised if you experience a lot of light in your life from stepping into this. Um, the moon is the symbolism of um mystical femininity. She's like the cosmos, the the we can't know who God is, but we can infer. And the moon is the symbol of divine femininity in the cosmos. And so just by presencing with her and acknowledging her and being curious about her and staring at her and asking her questions and receiving her energy, I feel like you awaken the divine feminine within yourself. You give her permission to um express, to ask, um, and be made stronger from showing up like under the moon. Um, so I just wanted to start off mentioning that mitzvah of Kiddishlavana. And to go into this week's parsha. So this entire um parsha talks about Hashem asked Moshe to go ahead and talk to his brother Aron, who was the Kohin, the high priest, and um to give these teachings over to Arun and to all of Arun's descendants who would serve as priests. And so, because of the Kohanim and because of these instructions, we have the codes passed down in our tradition from then until today of how to honor this higher sanctity that God asks of a Kohan.

unknown 7:24

Right?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

The Kohanim were tasked with being the representatives of the people in God's most divine space. And they were told, like, you can't live a regular life, you can't have a job, and you can't um take care of land, and you can't have the responsibility of taxes and all of these, because once you're doing all of that work, your consciousness falls lower to the mundane, to the reality, to God's world. And so God created this entire system within the land of Israel where Kohanim don't have their own land to tend, and they stay above the physical life. They're like, they're taken care of in this system. And so their mindset never gets pulled down into the lowest levels of the mundane life. And in in, and because they stay at that higher level, they become channels for divine, and they become like leaders and conduits for us to turn towards when we need help, when we need divine connection. They're like one step above the world and once and one step within the next world, the heavenly realm, divine realm, and they're like our intermediary so that when we do need guidance with the divine with the divine in our lives, they don't have to go through this intense cleansing, upra, like raising themselves up, um, climbing in their consciousness, so that they could be a source of guidance and an immediate channel for us. So we're gonna go through all the laws that pertain to them. Um, and yeah, I welcome you to feel within yourself what comes up as you hear it, so that you know the Torah can truly be alive for you and for us. So the first mitzvah we're told is that um it covers the idea of the Kohanim, there, you know, in the last week's, I'm gonna backtrack a little bit, in the last week's partios, we learned so much about the laws of Tuma and Tara, of ritual defilement and purity when it came to an ordinary person, and how a person had to be so careful with what energy they interacted with, because that would um transfer over into their being, and that would prevent them from being able to go bring a sacrifice to God or from being able to be intimate with their spouse because they would, you know, cross-contaminate. And now we shift over, and then we spoke about the Kohanim and the ritual pure um requirements of them, and we go into greater detail here where uh Moshe tells the Kohanim that if you um are in a home and somebody dies, you are not allowed to be present. You're like you have to do everything within your power to remove yourself from um people who passed away. And you are not allowed to go to a funeral and you are not allowed to bury the dead. The exceptions for this were if the person was a close relative to the Kohen. If it's the if the Kohain, the priest's um wife, mother, father, son, or daughter or brother um were the one to have passed away, or his sister who was still single and not married, he this Kohain would be allowed to um cause himself to become ritually impure and to bury or attend the burial, or actually bury. They have we have a mitzvah to bury our dead. And only under these requirements of close relative would this coin be allowed to exit his status of being this portal of life and become unavailable and involved with this mitzvah of burying the dead. Now it says that his ability to bury his wife, right, is contingent on the fact that the wife was permitted to him. Later in the in the portion, in the Torah portion, it speaks about what would disqualify a woman from being eligible to marry a Kohin. There were restrictions on the women that were allowed to a cohen. And so this Kohen is only allowed to bury his wife if she was permitted to him. It also says that if he chose to marry a woman that was not permitted to him, that until he divorces her, he's not allowed to serve the people and Hashem until he chooses to divorce her. And at that point, he would be welcomed back in and allowed to serve in the um to serve Hashem. The Kohanim are reminded that they cannot remove here as a sign of mourning. Just to backtrack for a moment, I forgot something. The only um exception to a Kohen becoming impure was if they happen to have been like walking through, you know, a parcel of land and there's nobody else around to bury this person. At that point, they have the mitzvah of haftalarecha kamocha to love their fellow as themselves, and they are commanded that it's better for you to become ritually impure and allow this person the dignity of a burial. Um, and so if there, it's like if there isn't a man present, then you step up into that role. Um, so I thought that's important to share. And now to go on to like further restrictions on the Kohanim. A sign of mourning is to remove your ear. And um, a Kohen was not allowed to remove his ear as a sign of mourning. He was not allowed to shave the five edges of his beard or make cuts in his flesh. Here, grooming is a sign of and an experience of luxury, and um he's told that he cannot remove it's I'm sorry, he cannot remove his ear as a sign of mourning. He needs to keep his ear on. I guess he's always tapped into that status of um a certain experience of of luxury. And um it says that while we all have the mitzvah to be holy, to be a holy people, to be the representatives of God, the Kohanim have this added level. And they're told that they cannot desecrate Hashem's name. And if they were to desecrate Hashem's name, they're penalized in a way that's much greater. Like the stakes are so much higher for a Kohin, as are the rewards and the responsibilities. They're the ones to serve Hashem his food, and so they have to go this extra measure and this extra mile to um ensure that God's name is um made holy. Okay, from here the Torah goes into marriage restrictions. That um, again, welcome your triggers and your interactions. It's important. So it says that if a woman committed adultery in her past and she was an unfaithful woman to any man, um, and a cohen marries her, he would lose. Okay, the first thing is he's not allowed to marry a woman like that. That's what the Torah says. He may not marry a woman who has adultery in her past and in her history. He's also not allowed to marry a woman whose birth status isn't 100% clear, that she comes from a clean line of permissible marriage. As well, he is not allowed to marry a divorcee. He has to marry a woman that was never married before. A child who was born from a woman who was intimate with a cohen would not have the status of cohen passed down to this child if the woman was not a permissible woman. So in Jewish law, Judaism is defined by the maternal line, like through the matriarchy, that's what would pass a soul to a soul. But it's through the patriarchy that your status, your tribal status, was passed down. And so if this coin was married to a woman that he was not allowed to be married to, the status of Kohen would not go ahead and pass along to the child that is born from this union. It's the Kohen's responsibility to choose a wife that would enable this passing over of this of the priestly rites. Um and as a community, we're told that if a Kohen is trying to marry a woman that doesn't meet these requirements, we should do our best to intervene and try to persuade the Kohen to marry a woman within the requirements that God is asking of him. We're also told that a Kohen needs to be honored in our presence. He gets to speak first at gatherings, he gets to read from the Torah first, he's called up first, and he gets to recite blessings before and after meals. Okay, and now we go into again another deeper layer within the rules for the Kohain, and this is a difficult one. The usual punishment for adultery is execution. If a Kohain's daughter was the one to commit adultery and she desecrates her father as well as herself, she the punishment for her was that she would be burned in a fire publicly. And it was assumed that her father was an attentive present presence in her life. He raised her. And so when she chose to violate these um requirements of what is sacred and what is divine and what is permissible, she is um desecrating God as well as her father. And the punishment is that much more public and humiliating and painful. I guess there's also this added added incentive to fathers that your home will be desecrated and your daughter will burn in a fire if you don't take the time to be an attentive presence in her life. If you don't raise her in a way where her soul is guiding her within her sexuality, God forbid, God forbid, she will end up violating her soul's truth. She will violate her own sexuality, the essence of her own femininity. And the result of that is she will be burned in a fire, right? And so it's it's like it's actually, you know, as I'm I'm thinking and feeling into this, it's not, it's almost God's not punishing this woman. He's telling the father, this is what's going to happen to your daughter if you are not an active role in her upbringing. And if you don't address sexuality in your daughter's life, if you don't know what is the cause of sexuality, if you don't know what evolves a young girl's sexuality from the time she's hitting puberty or even younger, and then evolving. And that's not a conversation or an awareness in your family's home. This is what will end up happening. She will be burned in a fire because sexuality is a fire. It's one of the hottest fires that exists in this world. And your presence with it and your um honesty and openness to it is what will keep your daughter safe, right? Your greatest um ability to keep her safe is by being in conversation about it. I actually, um in last week's Parsha, it spoke about prostitution, and I felt like I really wanted to say this and I didn't. So we're here, we're back here in this conversation. It said how, you know, if you if you allow your daughters to become prostitutes, then the land will vomit you out. Because right now, the only reason that the Jews were even inheriting the land of Israel, why did God have the right to literally take seven nations who were there and cause them to become wandering civilizations and become homeless? Because they they were engaging in these dark sexual behaviors. And so the land of Israel was vomiting them out. And God is saying to them, this is the way of the world. This is mother nature. She will not allow you to build communities, she will not hold you, you will not experience her maternal hold if you don't align with her frequency. The truth of feminine frequency, of feminine wholeness, divine feminine energy is sacredness, is boundaries, is a clear channel within our sexuality. And so it's, these are not like you can view them as consequences, or you can view them as the gift of living in the land of Israel, of living within your body, your home is Israel. The gift of being able to be held within your body is by aligning with your sexual truth. And if not, you get spit out. You cannot live in your home. I know so many women who were sexually abused who experience disassociation, right? They could no longer be present within their body. Their body pushes them out, right? We think like, oh, it's not safe for us to be in here anymore. This is where I got hurt. I can't stay here. I'm safer to go up to my head and live from a cerebral intellectual place, right? Maybe emotional if I'm lucky, um, if that doesn't get cut off for me, but definitely not in a somatic, like integrated, embodied way. And um, as I'm learning, like the key the pathway home is to align ourselves with God's divine sexual truth, and that like the land welcomes you back in to hold you. Now we go into the Kohing Gadal, the high priests, right? Until now we were talking about any priest, and now we're gonna go into the specific category of the high priest, right? And so while while we're receiving this, it's Arun, Moshe's brother, who's the high priest. But throughout the generations, there have been different um descendants, grandchildren of Arun, who um who inherited this rule, and these were teachings that are passed down for them. A kohen godal may not leave his hair uncut for more than 30 days, even if a close relative has passed. He always needs to be looking presentable and groomed and well taken care of. He may not bury um a close relative, even a parent, and become ritually defiled. He does, he loses this independent individual status and he becomes a leader for the people, and that's all across the board. Um, the only exception would be is if he comes across a corpse and there's nobody else present, he his mitzvah would come into play. He may not leave the sanctuary to attend a funeral, and um, he must marry a Virgin woman, not a woman, not a widow, not a divorcee, and not a woman who acted like a prostitute. He should be careful to have children in a way that the priesthood would be passed down to. Um and that's the that's like the segment is concluded there. Okay, from here the Torah goes on to um a conversation about priests who would become disqualified because of either a birth defect or because something happened to them in their life which deformed their body, right? Um, and I I shared in our cacao circle prior how the Yitzemach Sedek has a discourse on the these psukim, on this pasuk that transformed my life. So I'm just um presencing with that here. Hashem tells Moshe to tell Arun, any of his descendants who have a bodily defect may not offer Hashem his food. Who would this be? Like who would fall under this category? A blind man, a lame man, a man whose nose is sunken in, a man with mismatched limbs, a man with a broken arm or leg, a man whose eyebrows are long, that they extend over his eyes, a man with a cataract, if his iris and his eye mingle with the white, if they mingle together, if he has dry boils or oozing boils, if he has crushed testicles, and for the duration of the defect, he's not allowed to serve Hashem and offer carbanos. What is he allowed to do, right? He's his entire tribe. They have a the Kohanim operated from this um this mechanism of a rotation. Men between the ages of 20 to something, I don't know, the maybe 55 or 60, they uh they rotated their service. So they would go from family to family, maybe, and you would be called to serve in the Basin Magdash for a specific amount of time for that duration of time, and then the rotation would shift and the next family would come. I don't know the exact mechanism, but you have a boy, let's say, who turns 20, and I hope I'm accurate with the with the ages, and everybody in his family, his brothers, his uncles, they all talk about their experiences of being in ceremony, of getting to serve God, of tapping into this incredible, um, incredibly pressurizing but meaningful experience of going to the temple, of living there, of serving the people. And then this one child who was born with the defect, with a mismatched arm or leg, or, you know, God forbid, a birth defect while the child was born, and this child is not going to go up to serve, right? Everybody else goes except for him. And um the what we're told that this child, this person is allowed to go, and he's not allowed to work. His requirement, his job, his way of serving God is in eating, in taking part of God's food. It says that the entire process we went through it in the past partio of how was a carbon offered to God, right? The animal was chosen, it was unblemished, it was a certain amount of age old, it was sacrificed in a certain way, certain intentions and prayers were said, your hands were put this, finally the cohen would go and slaughter it and sprinkle its blood, right? Your forgiveness was only achieved, right, when the Kohain would take his portion and sit or stand with it and consume it and digest it. That was the moment when the per the person bringing the offering received their atonement. Their energy became like a clean slate only once a cohen was actually consuming their sacrifice and their offering. It wasn't on the moment when God was receiving the energy when that was on the altar. It wasn't at the moment that the blood was being sprinkled on his body or on the koins. It was when a cohen was taking part in something physical and pleasurable that the atonement and the clearing is complete. And we're told who are the ones who could who can help with this more than anybody else. It is the Kohanim who have blemishes, who have these birth defects or have these bodily defects, um, that they don't have the work of going into the service and knowing all the requirements of how do you hold the animal and what do you have to say. They have a much more um mundane job, which is a holy job, which is to actually eat the animals, to consume it, to allow its food to digest within their bodies. And that's their gift to the Jewish people, in them taking part in pleasure, in being alive in God's world to experience his food. That's what brings the community, the forgiveness and the light that they're seeking to achieve with their entire sacrifice. And then on the flip side, it says that any cohen who was ritually defiled, he was not allowed to eat the food at the time that he was ritually defiled. Um, and if he did, he would be cut off. If a cohen had tsarat or a seminal discharge, he was not allowed to eat from the holy food until he purified himself. If a cohen touched a carcass of one of the eight crawling creatures that impart ritual defilement, he too was not allowed to consume or serve. From here, the the Torah has a few more details about who is allowed to eat from the food and who is not allowed to eat from the food. And um the first teaching here is that a Jewish bondservant who was living in a Kohen's home is not allowed to eat the food. It's called Truma. If there is a non-Jew that was purchased to work as a bondman in the Kohen's home, he is allowed to eat from the truma. And if a non-Jew, if non-Jewish children are born from a Jewish bondman and a not Jewish bondwoman, the woman and the children are allowed to eat from these holy foods, this truma. The Kohen's wife and children are allowed to eat the truma from their father unless his daughter marries somebody outside of the priest, the tribe of Kohanim. So if she marries within her tribe, she gets to maintain that status and she gets to eat her father's food or her husband's food. If she marries another Shaivet, another tribe, she wouldn't be allowed to eat her father's truma anymore. If her husband passes away, or if she divorces her husband and she never had children with him, she would be allowed to return to her father's home and eat from his food, his truma, his holy food. Um, a priest may not may eat truma while he is in a state of mourning. And if a person who is a lay person, he's not a Kohain, accidentally eats truma and finds out afterwards that he did, he needs to take the amount that he ate, add onto it a fifth of that portion, and give it to the Kohain to return and to stabilize his error. And then the Kohanim are told to be careful to guard their truma and make sure that there isn't guilt that is spread amongst the people because of their negligence in guarding these foods and be being very aware of where these holy foods travel and move around. Okay, now we go into a conversation about animals, right? Which animals are allowed to be used for um uh sacrifice and which are not? And again, we come back to the conversation of their body, right? Of them having these deformities that would allow or not allow them to be used in the temple as a carvan. So if it was an ascent offering, the animal had to be an unblemished male from cattle, sheep, or goat. If it was a fowl, it was allowed to be blemished, but it couldn't be lacking any limbs. So if it was a bird, you had to make sure all the limbs were present, but you didn't have to inspect the animal to make sure that it didn't have any um blemishes. You could accept a blemished animal from a non-Jew who wanted you to give a carbon in the temple if it was for the sake of a dedication or a vow, but it wouldn't be for a carbon that would have its blood dashed like an a certain carbonos, like an ascent offering that went completely up to God or the blood was dashed around, those animals had to be um quote unquote perfect without any blemishes. Now the Torah goes on to talk about um different regulations that the Jewish people have towards their treatment of animals. When an ox or a goat or sheep um are going to be born, you need to allow the animal to stay with its mother for seven days. You may not separate the mother and the child for a minimum of seven days. From the seventh day and on from the eighth day and onward, you would be permitted to take this animal and to offer it as a sacrifice. But there is a minimum requirement from here, you can sense into like the Torah's appreciation for secure attachment on some level. This notion that a mother and a child need to be together for a period of time. And just in in um Judaism, seven marks completion, right? Like we have six days of the week, and then we come to Shavas, to like the Mashiach of the week. And so there's this teaching here of make sure that the these creatures get to be together for this duration of a completion. You may not slaughter a cow or a female goat or sheep on the same day that you slaughter its offspring, even beyond sacrifices, right? Even if you are just slaughtering food for yourself, a mother and a child are not allowed to go in the same day. And then it says, Don't martyr your life with a plan that God will intervene and save your life, right? You can't go on a fool's errand and say, I'm gonna do this crazy and wild thing because God's gonna save me. God tells you here, don't don't do, don't think, don't operate that way because that's not how I operate. Okay. So from here, the Torah switches gears and it talks about the festivals and Shabbos. And um, before I do go into that to those that conversation, I'm happy to pause here and hold space for any questions or any um feelings that have come forward over the first half. If anybody feels called, I'm happy to pause. If not, we can go forward. We can talk after, or it's okay. Okay. Okay. Um I have some things to share about this whole idea of like it feels like God um prioritizes perfection and beauty. And you know, going into the Mimur, like why would God create an individual who wasn't quote unquote perfect and then go ahead and like penalize them for it, right? It feels like there's this injustice here of why don't I get to be like the rest of my family? God, you were the one who created me like this. And also there's like there's just this overall confusion of like in Judaism, we don't, we don't really, I don't really see that we um that God promotes perfection. Like perfection is the work of God. Like wholeness and messiness is the experience of us down here in this world. So these teachings feel like they there's like a tension in them that wants clarification, like they don't fully land. It feels like there's something inside of them that needs to be opened up and broken into for it to be like digestible to me. But I I think we'll just go through the whole parsha and then we'll comment at it at the other side and I'll see what wants to be shared. So so the question is if these Kohanim who are born with a birth defect, if they have any way to improve to fix themselves so that they could. Um, so what I understood from like the actual Psukim, it says that there's like short-term injuries that could happen to a person. And if their body will naturally heal, then they would be able to come back into service, like a broken limb, right, or a broken bone, or um, but at the same time, there was no plastic surgery, right? At the time that the Torah was given. So there were for sure a group of people who would um who were who lived with the the weight of this, the pain of this, that had no way out. Like this was their their challenge and their lot in life. And there was no um, you know, I don't know if they lived with the hope that one day this would, you know, God would heal them from that. Maybe they prayed, like one day I'd be healed from this and I would be able to. But it it's, you know, you're touching on um let's say mouthserek, he has this teaching on these kohanim, you know, you you really come to appreciate the the deeper dimension of Torah, which is chasidis, because for how many years did how many generations did Jews learn the Torah and they learned these teachings, and there was no no light, there was no sweetness, there was no awareness of what was God's ideas behind these teachings? Why would God do this? And it wasn't until 200 and something years ago where the Semachzed wrote a five-page discourse that explained to you why God would do this, why would a Kohin be tasked to experience this? What was happening for God? Why would God do this? What was happening for the Kohin? What was his mission down here in this world that would require him to live in this way? So you're asking, like, God was the one who created them in this way, and now he goes and he has like this limitation on his own creation. He created the birth defect and he created the person, and now they're held back, but this was all God's plan, right? So the first thing that comes to me is um, as I'm talking about this, in a way I was gonna touch on it later, but let's just go with the flow and see what like where it goes. Um so often in life, we we blame ourselves. We assume that the reason why we're held back in life is because of us. I think that maybe like I know for myself, like my go-to um inner, like my ego's go-to default is um self-blame. What did you do wrong? How did you mess this up? Like there must have been something that you messed up that's making your life more challenging because life is not meant to be this challenging. So, where did you go off track? What's missing inside of you? What's deficient in you that you can't get this right, or you can't get motherhood, you know, more on target? And um, over here you're asking, like, God created the person this way, and then God gave these mitzvos to him. And just like, let's presence with the with the fact that you're right, it was God, it wasn't our fault. Like, can we take a minute to remove the self-blame that we put on top of ourselves with so much heaviness and say, My mitzvah comes from God? These Kohanim were in their own bracket of Kohanim within Kohanim that had an exclusive task, which was to sit and eat or to stand and eat. I don't remember the specific, there are like like rules of how you were allowed to consume the truma. But what if like we just realize that you're we're like we're really pointing to God and we're saying, God, you did this, right? You created me this way, and you gave these rules and you gave these mitzvos. And I think like that's the beginning of something that can that can that can be healing, some healing that can come from this situation is when there is a defect to presence and realize God was the one who chose this. Wasn't my fault, and I didn't do this. And I, to me, I feel like that's the first step into the light because so often I I just can go inward and remember yesterday, literally like right, it's not too long ago, but in my past life, before more of the healing came in, this was the constant metrium, this was the constant voice that kept me in a prison that I did this to myself. And therefore I can't trust myself because how did I mess up? How did I marry the wrong person? How did I allow the abuser to get to me? How it was all self-imposed, a self-imposed prison. And when we could um have the conversation as the starting point with this truth, God chose this, not me. And if God chose it, then like there's a certain for me, there's a certain safety in that starting point. At least you're operating in truth. Before that, as your starting point, your ego is lying to you. It's lying to you because it wants to assume that you have control over something you don't. It wants to feel powerful, it wants to feel capable, it wants to feel like it has autonomy. And so if I could tell you this and I could control you and I could assume that I'm in charge of you, then I have this power. But it's it's like false power just to give me the this impression that I have freedom. Um, I'll just say for me, what happened after I like reckoned with the fact that God was the one who did this, I wrote God an F you letter. Like I don't actually, I never said FU to God. There's and there's a law in this week's parsha that you can't do that. But that was my energy behind it. It was like this permission to show up to God and say, What the hell were you thinking when you did this to me? And where were you when this happened to me? And how, what were you thinking when you you allowed for this to be going on in my family so that my parents wouldn't be available to me while this was going on? It was just like this um permission to show up to the conversation with like full honesty of how did you do this to me? And I remember being very scared to write this letter. Like I wasn't raised in a way where you were allowed to be chutzbedek, like you were allowed to show up to God. You just have to say thank you for everything and pray for better and assume the best. And like there wasn't a like, who are you to stand in front of God and and share these very human feelings? I was actually very, very scared to do this. Like I thought, I don't, I don't know if I thought I would drop dead, but I knew I was going off the course of how my parents and my ancestors in my line showed up. And um, I remember where I was when I wrote the letter, and I remember hearing, like, it wasn't, I won't say like right after that, but within that time frame of the next few weeks, or maybe even right after, I heard like this vibration inside of me that said, um, like, thank you, thank you, Leia, thank you for showing up to the conversation. You're here. Now I can answer you. You asked questions. Now I can be here with you. And honestly, it was the beginning of true healing for me. What really prompted me to write that letter was a friend of mine handed me um a book that she was heavily, her and her husband were heavily involved with, Shah Habi Tachun, Gates of Trust. And she handed it to me, and I started to learn it and write notes on it and internalize it. And I was learning about this incredible God who cares about me more than I care about myself, who has my best interest at heart more than I could ever imagine, who's always doing good. Only good emanates from above. And I was taking it in and taking it in. I was like trying hard to create a new God, like let go of the God that I knew and form a new concept of God. And eventually there was like this, like this limit inside of me, and like this girl inside of me said, like, this is not the God. How how do you reconcile the God that you're learning about with the God inside of you? And um, from there, this letter came forward. And um, I I think like not too soon after, like, invitations for real deeper healing came into my life. So, yeah, there the the semalterek has a specific answer to your question of why these kohanim. My recommendation is that everybody should um look up this mimer called Kohin Balmum. Rabbi Y.Y. Jacobsen goes through it in eight parts. Um, I'll try to share it in the show notes so people can have easy access to it. Um Kohin Balmum, the Kohen who bears this blemish. Yeah. Okay. So now we're gonna go into um the teachings about Shabbos and the festivals. And um the Psukim, like even though in the past there we were already given the holidays and we were already given the laws of Shabbos, in these um, small details are added on for our further and deeper understanding. Okay, so the first thing it talks about is the three festivals. They're called the Shalashragalam, the three pilgrim festivals. And it says that God desires that as many people as possible should be able to travel and and be with him in his temple in Yerushalayim for these holidays. And so if the courts notice that a group of People have left and are still traveling and they won't make it in time to their destination, the temple, before the holiday starts. They should add another month to the calendar so that the pilgrims can finish their voyage and arrive on time. And so over here, what you have here is that even though we're gonna see in the next sukkim that God was the one who chose the dates for when these holidays are to happen, the court is told that you need to be a partner to enable these to happen. You need to use your human power and your human um wisdom to ensure that God's ultimate will can happen in this world. And so that often meant, or maybe that also just means, you know, we have a leap, a leap year when we put an added month of Adar so that the hot the festivals can happen in the right seasons, right? We will add a month to compensate for the solar and the lunar calendar, become like staying aligned with each other. Okay, regarding Shabbos, the seventh day is a complete rest day for you. You may work for six days and on the seventh honor it with fine clothing, with special foods and appropriate prayers. You may not perform any work on it. It is a Shabbos to God in all of your dwelling places. Similarly, you may not work on festivals. If you keep the festivals, God will reward you as if you had kept the Shabbos. So over here we have this understanding that the holidays are on a level of Shabbos, and the same requirements of not working on Shabbos and of celebrating them are like they have this equal status. I don't know if it's equal status, but it says the reward for it is equal. The first of the holidays here are Pisa, Passover, and it says that we need to celebrate it on the night of the 14th day of the first month of the month of Nisan. It's the 15th day, and it's the festival of matzah begins. So on the 14th day, they had to bring an animal sacrifice, and then on the 15th day they had to eat matzah. Um, they're also told that it's a seven-day period holiday, and collectively, as a nation, they were required to bring certain sacrifices to Hashem. So they had to bring a fire offering. On the second day of Passover, they brought an umer sacrifice, which was made out of barley. And from the time they brought that umer, that marked the beginning of counting of the seven weeks of the um Svirasa Umr, right? The count of seven weeks from Pisach until Shvuas that we count. Also, when they brought this barley offering to God, it was um what it did was it opened their private harvests, right? They were an agricultural society. Everything about their life was dependent on the agriculture and on their food. And so they would first take this barley offering, bring it to God on Pesach, and from there they had permission to go ahead and consume their own harvest. That was like the opening ceremony where they brought their food to celebrate together with God, and from there they were allowed to use it for personal use. The Khoin would wave it before God, and this would attain God's favor for all of their produce and all of their monetary um assets. And um, there were also other offerings that went along with it. On Passover, no bread is allowed to be eaten, and um, from there we go into the holiday of Shvuas. On Shvuis, we have a mitzvah to bring, to bring, to bake leavened bread. So the opposite of Pesach, right? Pesach, you weren't allowed to eat muchamitz, and on shu'is you needed to. And it's made out of wheat from the first grain offerings of the new harvest. Um seven lambs were brought on shvuas as offerings to God, and um it was a reminder that you were not allowed to harvest your crop until you brought this offering to God on shwas, and then from there you were allowed to eat certain parts of your crop again. The next holiday was the next of the three pilgrims. The last one is um, no, not the last one, the second one. Shwas was not considered. I don't think shwus is a shalashragalim, is it? It is pesach, shwus and sukis. So Rosh Hashanah, what I'm shearing is not. Okay. Rosh Hashanah is the head of the year, it's the first of Tishrei, and it's a day of rest and remembrance that has to be marked through the blast of the shofar, and it needs to be a holy occasion for you before God. Then Hashem says, mark the holiday of Yom Kippur, which needs to be celebrated on the tenth day in the month of Tishrei, Yud Tishrei, and it will be a day of atonement for you. It will atone for those who repented for their misdeeds. So you celebrate it as a holy occasion and afflict yourself with no food or water or intimacy with your spouse, no leather clothing, and you don't put ointments on your body. What I found interesting is that Yom Kippur was this opportunity for a person who prepared themselves for it. Nowadays we have this teaching that if you fast on Yom Kippur, the day itself will atone for you. But as the it's given in the actual text, it says that you do your part, you do all the healing that you can on your own, you confess, own up to, bear witness to your own process. Then you showed up on Yom Kippur and God like gave you a clean slate. But it was this partnership where we work together, God and the person. Um if somebody intentionally neglects this day, like they do it like specifically to anger God, it says that they would be cut off from the Jewish people. And um, it also has the category of being Shabbas. So if anybody, it was required that new work would be done and it was a complete rest. Um then we have the holiday of sukkis, sukkot. Sukkis was celebrated on the full moon of Tishrei, and the celebration of sukkot was a seven-day period where we were not allowed to do any mundane work. Um each of these seven days we brought a fire offering to Hashem, and then there was an added day, the eighth day, which was called Sheminiadseret, the eighth day after, which also had restrictions of being with Hashem because Hashem desired to have this one extra day of connection to the Jewish people. Like he couldn't bear to part with us after bearing being with us for seven days, so he asked for this last day, this eighth day. You must not perform any mundane work on it. Um, we have here the mitzvah on sukkot. We're supposed to gather together these four species. We have the lulav, the palm here, the palm frond, together with this the esra, which is the fruit of the citron tree. And we put that together with a myrtle bush and a willow tree. And that is the item that we use to celebrate and to rejoice with God on this holiday. On Sukkot, you must live in huts to remember the clouds of glory when God took you out of Egypt. This is a reminder of where you come from. Um, and for me, what I was really connecting to about this holiday of Sukkot is this idea that the first home that the Jewish people had when we left Egypt was a home made out of God's clouds. We only live in a home, and the home provides safety for us. But really, like we can trace our roots back to a hut. And before the hut, what was it? It was clouds. Like the hut and the clouds are like this reminder and this parallel. And for me, I was I was feeling into we all, we all like we live in a world where a home feels like it's the source of our safety, right? In large part, when I have a home, I'll be safe. When I could, you know, nest within my home, I'll have the safety that I need. And we have this reminder every single year on this holiday. And this holiday is told, um, it's called the holiday where you rejoice before God, where like there's a certain command to rejoice, which I want to talk about in a minute. But firstly, this idea that this reminder that our security and our safety only comes from being enveloped by God. Your the homes of your, the walls of your home are really clouds. And if we could remember that, that these are just like manifestations of God's clouds holding me, I feel like we can extract the energy from a home that God wants to give us. But if we look at like money as our safety, or if we look at food as our nourishment and our safety, we're forgetting the God in it. And maybe it will provide nurture on some level, but the deeper nurture that all of us are craving today is that like divine element within the substance, within the money, right? And so our home is literally, it's a manifestation of this, of this, the clouds that Hashem protected us in. And um, we need to we get to remind ourselves of that every single year. This is the opportunity and the reminder. I also feel like um like as a couple, as you grow, you get to look back at all the homes that you traveled through and remember, you know, your first home when you you guys chose each other and you didn't know where your first apartment or home would be. And you went out and you traveled together and you trusted God and you trusted each other that one day we would find a home. And you just you can trace your journeys, your literally your adventures together. And um there's something romantic and beautiful about being able to look at the past and please God. Hopefully, you got to see the growth in it. But I I was like a little bit, you know, going back to the idea of sukkot is this holiday where you need to rejoice before God. And I was thinking, like, how could God demand that you rejoice? Like, how do you demand of someone be happy? Like, isn't happiness an emotion that or uh or a reaction on your heart that is the result of like if you know things coming into play? Like, how do you demand of yourself, it's my birthday, I need to be happy today? Or that never sat right by me, but I was, you know, holding space for this here. And I was thinking like God gave us a holiday and he told us that you need to rejoice on this day. So, my my what I'm feeling is we get to start being curious and question and ask ourselves, what is likely to bring me joy? What are the experiences that are likely to bring out my happiness? And in the days leading up to that, or on the actual holiday, it becomes my mitzvah to engage in those so that I end up, or at least I set myself up to bring myself this happiness and these this rejoicing. It's like this invitation by God to say, like, what's your favorite color and what's your favorite flower and what's your favorite food, and who's your favorite person, and where's your favorite place to go? What brings out the joy in you? And you literally have a commandment that you need to do this for yourself. You need to have a holiday where you tap into this greater joy inside of you. You need to know that you have joy in you. And it feels like this imposition of like God demanding this from us. But really, like I'm feeling this more and more that anything God ever asked of us, it's really for us. It's literally a gift from us. He holds us to this high standard and he says, Yeah, blame it on me. This is what I demand of you. And when you stick with it, eventually you come to see that those offerings, those sacrifices that you gave God, they come to hold you in a way where you you realize, like, wow, God, this was all for me, right? This was all for the true whole version of me. Um, I I also just want to add one more point on the Shalash Ragalim. Um, when I did my podcast with Ellie, something came out that um really sat well for me and but in conversation with other people. And um it says that, you know, nowadays we don't have the three, we don't have pilgrim, we don't go up to the temple. I mean, some people travel to Israel, but we don't have a Besamikdash where we're going to offer these sacrifices that were specifically chosen to be given in those these times. And yet we still hold on to these templates and we honor these holidays as much as we are allowed to, right? Within living outside of messianic time, outside of the land. Um, and the sieges teach that the one of the mitzvot of the Shalash Ragalim is that a husband should purchase for his wife gifts for the holiday. And it there's requirements, it has to be in commensurate with his wealth. He needs to buy her clothing that um that honors the his money. He can't be stingy, right? It has to, there's requirements for how he has to give. And in my conversation with Ellie, what came out, you know, was you know, there's a dynamic that happens when couples, you know, demand things of each other, right? It makes things become stagnant or difficult to give when there's this energy of demand. And I was saying how what I see in the holidays, in the Shalash Ragalam, when the when the sieges said, bring for your wife a gift, they were telling men, men, your true nature is to be a giver, is to be a provider, is to be generous. Men are sourced from the energy of chesed, which is loving-kindness. That's their truth. And so you have these three checkpoints in your life in a year in this cyclical calendar of holidays that asks you, am I aligned with my essence? And as a woman, your essence is to be a receiver. And so you have three checkpoints within the year to ask yourself, is my energy open? Am I receiving? Is this marriage? And then the couple as a whole gets to ask themselves, is this marriage, this container before God, this union of this masculine and feminine soul? Are do we have a healthy dynamic of the masculine being able to be a provider and the feminine being able to be a receiver? And it's a checkpoint moment. And I know for many years for myself, in the past and possibly in the future, the answer is no, we're not in alignment. He's not giving, I'm not receiving, I don't know whose fault it is. Am I not receiving enough? And so he's not inspired to be a giver. Am I too much to my masculine? Is he trying to stay young and be a boy? And so he doesn't want to step into his masculinity, which means to be a provider, and there goes the blame and the questioning and the pain. Um, and I I don't um I don't have like great words of wisdom for what to do when the dynamic is stuck there. What I do know is that obviously it's going to be a hard question to ask yourself because the answer is painful. But I do feel that when we're honest with ourselves, leading back to the conversation, like when we can stand before God and share and speak our truth, that's the beginning of answers. I think like throughout most of the year, we might be feeling the resentment, we might feel the frustration, we might be feeling hurt by the dynamic of the giving and the receiving. But the the three pilgrim, these festivals were times where you were going to be with God and you get to stand in front of God and say, I really need help with this balance of the masculine and feminine. Please show me if there's areas within myself where I can align with my essence of being a receiver. What can I do? What can I invite in? Which spaces should I go to? Which healer should I reach out to? Which prayers can I speak? Which parts of myself do I have to let go of? Um, and then on the like another element here is I know that when I'm in a place of like high consciousness, I don't see my husband as separate from me. We're one. And so if the blockage is on his end, if his masculine is underdeveloped, right? And it's not an issue of the feminine, then it becomes like, what can I do to help the masculine part of me that's stuck? Not what does my husband have to do? Um, God, what can I invite into my marriage? What experiences can you attract for my husband? What can help my husband? What can you bring towards him that would enable him to step into greater masculinity? And again, I'm not um I'm not disagreeing with the idea of husbands and wives having open and honest conversations where you get to share your truth with your spouse. I'm just sharing, like beyond talking about it with your spouse, I find that a woman who prays for her husband, like she stands in these sacred opportunities before her candles when she's immersing in mikfah, when she's making khala, and she prays for her husband like he is her, like they are one, that whatever is happening to him is the masculine of her own soul. If they're married for now, they're soulmates. And so, what can I do for the masculine side of me that's stuck or trapped or hurt? And, you know, usually from where I'm holding today, like what I'm seeing today, is that deep change needs safety. In order to be able to admit to where you're struggling or where you're blocked or where you're lacking, you need safety. Like you cannot go ahead. I can't. I'll speak for myself. The last few months have been like this progression of building safety, building safety, becoming more connected to myself, to God, to friends, to therapists, to healers, just like proving to myself that I will show up to connection, even when it hurts, even when it's embarrassing, even when I'm ashamed, like showing my inner child I'm no longer doing this life isolated and building safety from how however many ways I could, building consistency, showing up for this podcast almost every single week since the year started. Showing my inner child you can count on me. I will feed you every day. I will drink water every single day. I will clean you every day. I will take care of you safety, safety, again and again and again. And what I'm watching happen is that I am slowly being able to see parts of my ego that I was never safe enough to see before. Like I needed the cohain in me, the love in me to be alive enough to be able to admit to where I need more and more and more help. So if you're in a relationship with yourself or a spouse who is having a very hard time seeing their blockages or seeing their limitations, for me right now, the prayer is like, God, what can I do to invite more safety into my marriage? How can I show my husband he is safe with me? How can his inner child know that he is safe, that I'm here for his goodness, for my love for him? We're not I'm on one side, he's on the other. We're literally here, we're on the same team. It's like our marriage against the energy of fragmentation, of darkness. That energy wants us to be separated from each other, and we're on the same team of being one and whole. And so just constantly um inviting the energy of safety into your container, into your marriage. That's um that's what I'm seeing here. Okay, the last few um mitzvot that were given in this parsha is that we need to live in huts and remember the clouds of glory when Hashem took Bi'srael out of Egypt. And then we have the mitzvah that the Jewish people were responsible for providing the oil for the menorah that had to be lit every day. Bring olive oil that was produced from the first crushing of olives, and that should be the light of your menorah to be lit regularly. Then we had the mitzvah of the 12 showbread, the lachamapanim, that were put every single Shabbos, these new fresh breads. Um, we have the mitzvah to not curse God and to not use God's name in vain. And then um we have a conversation about like the compensation of if somebody hit another and the person dies, what the punishment would be for the person who um inadvertently murdered somebody else or intentionally murdered someone. And then we have the mitzvah of if you strike an animal and you cause it harm, you need to pay the owner for the damages, and then um, yeah, all the injuries and compensations. And then this parsha concludes with a conversation. Um, again, another triggering topic. There was a woman, her name was Shlom Shlomis Bas Divri. And while she was in Egypt, while the Jewish people were in Egypt, she was raped by an Egyptian taskmaster. And this um experience, this rape experience caused her to become pregnant. And um, this child didn't have a home because, like we said, your tribe passed on from your father, and this Egyptian father was not a part of the of the community, and so this child wanted to set up his tent with his mother in the Shivat of Dun. But the Shaiva done didn't want this child there. And so they go before Moshe and they ask the question of where should this child who turned 20, maybe like under a certain age, he was allowed to live with his mother. But once he became a man, where would he, where would he be raised? Where would he set up home? And um I think the answer was that he was not allowed to live within the tribe. And he got very angry at the court's verdict. And something happened where he hit and he cursed God, and he, I think he attacked um the court representative. And from there, his life ends up being taken because of the way he showed up and he cursed God and he um he attacked another person. Um when I was sitting with this, like the conversation I had was, you know, up until now, we were we were taught the laws of how to run a sacred society, how to make sure that everybody in society has a place and a role and um where they belong. And then you have the experience of rape, where now the entire society becomes distorted. Where do you put a child that was not wanted in the world? Where should that child go? They weren't intentionally called upon. They weren't asked to be brought here. There wasn't a space within a mother that said, I am ready, I want this child. And so, like, nature works in a way where what you call upon now will manifest into this world and it will have a place. But look what happens in a society. We we literally run into like we become a jungle where people end up killing each other because they are so hurt, they have nowhere to live, they have no place to go, they have, they don't have a place to call home because they weren't brought into the world in a way of desire. When two when a couple are full of love for each other and they desire to raise each other's children and they welcome life into the world from a place of intention and consent, right? Where the woman is willing, where the man is willing. The land will have a place for those children, but the land does not have a place for these children. And these children become the scapegoats. I almost feel like these children are the children that are like the, you know, they're the coin with the mum. They're the they have this defect imprinted on them from no fault of their own. Um, it actually says in the Maimur that these children are partners with God in the deepest mission to bring mashiach. These children who carry this um this wound on their soul, especially people who were sexually abused, who their malchos was was blemished. This Maimur talks about how they are literally partners with the divine feminine energy who are going to the lowest and the darkest places in the world to pick up light that has fallen there. And when Mashiach comes, they will celebrate with Hashem and the divine feminine and the moon in a way that nobody else will. Like they will appreciate Mashiach in a way that far surpasses anybody else because they are they're journeying this journey. So when I was like holding space for what does these teachings, what do they have to do with me today, right? Every single week, the Torah has been a guidance in my life. And, you know, my mother is a Koan and she comes from the family the family of priests, and it's so special and beautiful to like hold gratitude for my grandfather and my that line of of where I come from, who have held these these teachings and these mitzvot, and um to realize the role they played and the sacrifices that they made in order for us to be able to serve. Like that feels um that feels sentimental and that feels like a place where I can experience gratitude. But in my life today, what does this mean? How is this holding me in my my week this week, right? Because Torah is alive and it's here to guide us with our modern day experiences. So when I was holding this and trying to apply it, um the what came to me is that we like we said when we spoke about Avramavinu and Sara Imenu, like the matriarchs and the patriarchs, we spoke how we spoke about how they're archetypes with of our own soul. Like we are the evolution of them and they are alive inside of us. There's a part of me, like that's a wise Sara Imenu, the voice of Sarah, the matriarch of the Jewish people. And there's a part of me that Aaron is, that of Aaron that lives inside of me, and I can call upon him when I need help with conflict and with love, right? These are the greats that walked ahead of us are alive around us and inside of us, and we can call upon them and walk their path that they already deeply, deeply carved out for us. And so the same idea for me is coming true about Kohanim. Kohanim are this archetype of human beings who lived above reality. They lived in like in this, we spoke about this a little bit, like outside of the regular Monday, day-to-day life. And what were they asked to do? They were told to um bless the Jewish people. They have this ability to pour love and bless each other, to remind each other how powerful we are that when we bless another Jew, God says, Let my blessings travel through that expression of love. Right? Kohanim were told that they needed to live from a place of service. They're taking care of, they're servicing other people. They're not living a life of receiving, they're living a life of giving. Um, they're also told to that they they needed to be willing to be different, to be a leader, different than the rest of the 11 tribes. And then I have here where they are in service of Hashem by seeing the godliness in the very physical, right? They're told that they have to be able to serve God while slaughtering animals and touching blood and pouring oil and dealing with the very, very human physical world. And mostly what's speaking to me is that they had to be so aware of life and death energy, of tuma and tara. They had to be so careful of this step brings me next to death, and this step brings me close to life. They were in constant recognition of every single action. They lived with so much awareness and with so much presencing, right? Like they were so conscious of their day-to-day life because they were constantly preserving life. That was their goal and their job. To be a conduit of life, to channel life into this world. They, their every thought, their every kavana, their every intention, their every interaction with nature, touching an animal, touching a bug, touching a woman, touching themselves. They were just so aware and so conscious. And my feeling is that my feeling is that we have a way of living as a way of existing where we are the Kohin, where we step into this way of living with so much awareness of our day-to-day. And I think that the Kohanim are just these, like these banners that were held up throughout time to tell us, like, guys, that's where we're aiming to go. That's where we what we aspire to become and to live like. Like this is what living in alignment with your greatest truth would look like. Um, I also had this thought before where the Rebbe was saying that on, especially on this week's Parsha, that what will bring Mashiach about in a very, very physical way, because right now we feel the energy of Mashiach in many areas of her life, but we're not living with a manifested physical leader in front of us as our Mashiach. And the Rebbe was saying that when you give tzidaka with the intention of this will hasten the redemption, and when you learn the laws that relate to the time period of Mashiach, that literally hastens Mashiach's arrival. And so I also feel like, you know, we learned all of these laws that don't really apply today, but they will apply in the times of Mashiach. So I feel like as a community, whoever takes a part of this, they're showing up to that request of the Rebbe, which was to learn the teachings of Mashiach to hasten his arrival. Um, I also have this idea here. I'm gonna read it from my notes about the koin with the mum. Maybe nowadays, as we enter Mashiach, we are the coin with the mum, with the blemish, with the deformity. We are allowed to eat from the holy foods, and others will receive atonement from the pleasure we will experience through eating Hashem's sacred foods. But we can't enter into the Holy of Holies because of our blemishes. So I'll break that down. Um, I had an experience before this holiday of doing healing work, and my great-grandmother, who I'm named for, came, like was with me, and she was extremely emotional. I had just helped my mother unpack our order, our meat order for Pesach. My mother hosted a lot of our siblings, and there was a beautiful abundance of food that we were stocking into the freezer. And um my grandmother was showing, my great grandmother was showing me how throughout the years of the Holocaust, when she and her children were sent to Siberia, they had no food to celebrate the holiday with, never mind, on a regular day. And she was like crying and crying and like, look what we look what we held on for. Look, like, look what we we fought, we held on, we pushed ourselves, we didn't give up. We told our kids, Lashana Ababa Yerushalayim, next year, next year you'll be redeemed. This year we're not, but next year we will be. And she was like crying and living with this gratitude and this awe of what I told my children was true. It wasn't in vain. We held on, we fought, we ate nothing, the bare minimum that we could on those holidays for those years of living as refugees, as living through the war. But look, my my children went on to be able to eat a sacrifice, to be able to eat an animal, to be able to give God this sacrifice on this holiday of Pisach. And I it was a very, very meaningful and emotional experience for me. Um, and I felt like every time I sat down to one of the meals, I every time I ate, I was bringing her pleasure. I was bringing my ancestral line, the joy of what they sacrificed for. Like I was just imagining my ancestors looking down on our table and seeing, like, wow, like we held on, we fought, and look, it was all worth it. Like, look, my children are eating, and the feeling of the Kohen who brings pleasure to um, like when by him take partaking in pleasure, he brings redemption into the world. And um, that's what was speaking to me here. But the second part here is when you have a mum, when you have this deformity, when you have this crust blocking you, you cannot enter the Holy of Holies, right? The Holy of Holies exists inside of us. There are different tunnels and different chambers and different openings within us. But when you when you were hurt, or you were born hurt, or you were, you experienced different deformities that stop you from being able to have full access to your entire being, you can't enter the Holy of Holies. Um, okay, and I I really already touched upon this idea that it takes a tremendous amount, it takes a tremendous amount of bringing safety, of like the the work of bringing safety into your into your into your being, into your family, into your container to be able to go and peel back those blemishes and those crusts that will one day give you the full range where you do get to enter the Holy of Holies. Um, and the last idea I have here is um, you know, God gave us these festivals and these holidays. God taught us how to create a marriage, how to follow these mitzvot, and then how to show up to the holidays, to bring ourselves into this open posture of receiving. Everything about the holiday is inviting you to be a receiver, to be open, to take a shower, to have good food that's prepared, to be wearing beautiful clothing, to have a clean home, to have a beautiful surroundings, to invite company that you enjoy, to be a part of a community. And all of that is to show you, hey, you're safe. You don't have to hear the voice of your ego that's trying to tell you you're not safe, you're on the run, you're in survival mode. You get to pause and realize there is so much blessing in my life right now. There is so much messianic energy and open you up more and more and more. And my my awareness or my feeling is that when you show up in this open posture on holidays, you you show up to God revealing um, I feel like downloads come through on holidays. I feel like gifts of awareness and light and clarity and blessings come through when you honor a holiday and when you honor a festival. And so the more you can show up to this holiday and prepare for it in accordance to the guidance that God gave you, I feel like the more you expand your vessel to be able to receive the light that Hashem is offering. And then lastly, God told us the structure of our marriage to him. And I feel like that's really an invitation for us to say, what does my marriage need? What festivals does my marriage need? What holidays? What three pilgrims, what Shabbas, what what does that look like? My father has this expression, he said it's like a Yiddish saying of the Yamtif in the Vachin. How do you turn a holiday, how do you make a weekday into a holiday? And I feel like, you know, you can pay attention to what moves you into openness, what moves you into expression, what moves you in your marriage, what makes you whole, and say, this is going to become a holiday in our marriage, whether it's we celebrate anniversaries in this way, whether it's we celebrate Hawdallah in a certain way. I know for myself, I'll just give one example. I felt like when I was learning and living, like God was inviting me to ask myself, what rituals does my marriage need to be able to stay aligned? What do my children need for my marriage so that it stays aligned? And one of like the first rituals my husband and I chose was that we made um a dance party every hafdallah, whenever we like we did the ceremony to close out Chavez, I said, like our family needs joy and fun in our bodies. And so we would light the, we would do the hafdallah ceremony and then we would put on beautiful, loud, joyful music and just dance and throw our kids around and flip them over. And it was an incredible, incredible blessing that like anytime we had company over, and then they would get into it and like the energy spread. I just saw how you know God wants to send us awareness and teachings, and He first sends it through the light. If we're there with a container, with a ceremony, with a holiday to receive it, so the download comes through there. If we never stand out with that open posture to receive it, and we're like hiding in our turtle shell and we're doing like the beer minimal, we're just surviving, the energy has to force through the turtle shell to reach us so that we can grow. Because we're literally inside the turtle shell praying for change, for growth, but the it can't reach us, and it feels very painful when the light tries to come through. So that my inspiration here is to re invite myself to ask what holidays, what festivals, what celebrations, what yamam tovim is my my marriage and my family asking of me so that I can receive more and more light. Thank you so much for coming and holding space so that all of this could come forward.