Behar-Bechukosai: Returning to Alignment

In this episode of More to the Story, I speak about the double Parsha of Behar-Bechukosai which tells of the mitzvah of Shemitah, the commandment to let the land rest.

I talk about the force of productivity, survival, and financial striving, what I describe as “the river” that so many of us get pulled into, and how Shabbos, Shemitah, and the feminine energy all come to interrupt that flow and remind us to step back into alignment. I reflect on rest as an act of faith, the willingness to loosen our grip and remember where our sustenance truly comes from.

I also speak about Yovel, the year when slaves go free and land returns to its rightful owner, and what it means to reclaim the parts of ourselves we may have handed over to fear, shame, overwork, or control.

I speak about the blessings and consequences described in details in Bechukosai, and how I no longer experience them as punishments from G-d, but as the natural spiritual consequences of alignment or disconnection.

Lea

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to More to the Story. I'm Leia Raboshkin Wolf, and today we'll go through the double parsio of this week, um, which is Bahar and Baku Kose. Before we go into the actual parsha, today was Lagba Omer. Um, and I I am not gonna go too into the idea of Sphirasa Omer because there's so much to cover. Um, these parshyos are long and detailed, but also um there's like a mitzvah in here of Shemitah that really, really um connected me back to the Torah when I learned it with a rabbi in um Stern College years ago. So I'm actually very excited. Um, when I opened up the Parsha and I saw how long it was, I was worried, but then I saw what the topic was, and um, I'm excited to share with you what um what captured me about this mitzvah and um how something that was so ancient and felt so irrelevant to me as a 19-year-old became something that it became very foundational for me. But on the just before we go into the idea of um the parsha on Lagba Omer, um, and on this this Yamtif of the Rashbi, I remember learning that three days before and three days after a great person passes away, their energy is very, very present in the world. So you really have it for a week. You have it the day of, you have three days before, and then you have the three days after. And so um really the entire world this week is flooded with the energy of the Rashbi and his light and his teachings. Um, and just a brief mention of the Rashbi that I found so moving, um we have uh the the sage Rabiakiva, who he grew up very ignorant of Torah, and he ended up marrying a woman, Rahul, and she she really believed in him and she really believed that there's no such thing as a dead end. And so when he thought that he wasn't capable of learning and he wasn't capable of catching up on the years that he missed out on and on the experiences that he missed out on, that's the power of a good woman. She can take a man who missed out on 40 years of the like the most important years of a person's life, and she breathed the confidence back into him that said, It's never too late, which we really just celebrated Pesar Sheni last week on thir on Friday. So, really, that energy is also in the world. This it's never too late. And she convinced him that he's very capable. And with determination, every single day he showed up to learning and eventually he became one of the greatest sages, to the point where he accumulated 40,000 students, I believe, or maybe 50,000 students, and we're told that um Rabi Akiva's main contribution to us, that what he he passed on and he left to us, was that the primary mitvah in the entire Torah is Avas Yasraal to respect another. Why was it so clear to him that Avas Yesra was the foundation of the entire Torah? Because he had 50,000 students, 40,000 students, maybe it's 20,000 students, I don't remember the exact number, and they were all sages and they all knew Torah, and they can all quote to you every Torah portion and every verse. But inside themselves, they couldn't develop respect and honor of another individual. They couldn't open that part of their heart, and he lost all of them, and they all pass away, which is what we what we honor and what we acknowledge from in the time of the Svirasa Omer. And um Rabi Akiva was down to five students and he was 80 years old, and he never gave up. His wife Rachel really taught him the message very, very well. It's never too late. And he didn't give up and he continued to teach new students. And he had five new students that he passed on his wisdom and his Torah to. One of these students was the Rashbi, Rabbi Shimon Variokai. And from him persevering and not falling into a place of despair of what was my life worth, look how many students I lost, what's the point? I'm gonna probably maybe I did something wrong that I lost all these students, so I shouldn't even try again. He didn't give up and he continued to teach. And because he continued to teach, one of those students was the Rabbi Shimon Bariochai, who went on to bring us down the Zohar, who literally brought down the secrets and the mysticism, the Kabbalah that we have came down through his portal. And so that's um that's really moving me today. And um, just on the topic of Svirasa Umar, today we celebrated Hoche Bahod, that's the day of the Rashbi, like surrender within surrender, humility within humility. And maybe because he went into such a deep place of surrender, he was able to bring down the Kabbalah, the Torah that we, the mysticism, the secrets, the inner dimensions of Torah, um, which really reveal like God's love notes. It's like if you were to open up a go into a marriage, and there's this private language happening between the couple and their love notes that they write to each other. That's what he brought down into this world. We had the Torah, we had the, you know, the book that every nation can read, every nation can study the Bible. And then the Rashvi, um, he ended up going into a key for 12 years to escape persecution. And perhaps, you know, we we say Ho Chabahor on his day because he went into a total surrender. And in that state of total surrender, look what he was able to bring out of that space and to pass on to all of us. Um I feel like, you know, I never talk about Svirasa Umar on the podcast because the the parsha is like it's too full. I don't know how to cut corners when I speak up with the parsha. But the only I'll I'll conclude the idea of Svirasa Umar with this that, you know, for 50 days from Pesach until Shvuas, Hashem sends us on a journey to like detox layer after layer after layer. And the entire process as I'm understanding it this year is all about pushing us deeper and deeper into becoming receivers. Like, how how much more can you receive? And more can you receive and more? And every single day, Hashem says, Can you pull back one layer? Can you pull back one layer? Can you open your heart one more, one more inch, one more step? Because ultimately, 40 49 days later, 50 days later, we're gonna come come to Shwas, and there's gonna be an energy in the giving of the Torah that we're gonna have when we read the Torah that we're all going to get to experience. And the more and more we can turn ourselves into like an open receiving vessel, the more light we can take in and receive on that day. So every single day from now until Shruis is really a day to ask God, please help me become a greater receiver. Please show me how to. I think that that's what's happening in the world right now. I feel like everybody, whether they know it or they don't, if they're like counting sphera somar or if they're just living life, I think that's what's happening to so many people. Um, but the end goal is like, how much can I stretch my capacity to receive? How much love can I receive? How much light can I receive? How how much can I be stretched so that I can receive more and more? Um, okay, now I'm gonna go into the parsha. So this the first parsha we have is called Bahar, which means on the mountain. And the main mitzvos that are spoken about in this parsha is um the mitzvah of Shemitah and Yovo. So in English that translates as the sabbatical year and the jubilee year. I'm gonna go through the actual mitzvah. I'm pretty sure like that's the two main mitzvahs. I'll see if there's any other mitzvos we receive. And then in the the next um Torah portion of Biqukhisai, which means, and if you will follow in my laws, in my Hashem first gives us, um, he spells out the blessings that he would like to give us if we follow in his ways. And then the end of the portion um concludes with um what would happen to us if we do not follow in Hashem's ways. And then we actually conclude the chap the book, the third precious shmospayra. In this week's um, when we are at Shol on Chabas, we're gonna say, um, we're gonna read Bihar and Bhuchuk Hosai, and after that, there the men are gonna call out Chazak, Khazak, Venis Chhazek, we're gonna conclude the third book. Um, so I feel that in this week we have like this double energy, this twin birth that is coming through the world. The energy is very, very big and very, very intense, and it's all illuminated with the light of the Rashbi. And there's a real opportunity to be strengthened and to strengthen each other. Um Hashem spoke to Moshe at the foot of Harsina and he gives over the details of the laws of Shemitah. Once Bene Israel have conquered and settled the land, they will have the mitzvah to implement of the sabbatical year. The Shemitah year, the sabbatical year is the Shabbos of the land, right? The Jewish people are told that we keep Shabbos every six days, and then this idea of working for six days and resting on the seventh is further. We find the same exact pattern on a grander or more um communal level, where Hashem says that you're going to move into an agricultural society. Right now, the Jews were eating mun in the desert, but Hashem is telling them, You're gonna come into the land and I'm gonna help you conquer it, and I'm gonna help you settle in it. And once you have your portion of the land, you will be um you'll become an agricultural society. You're gonna become farmers. And so for six years you'll work the land, but in the seventh year it has to be Shabbos for a full year. There's no work that's allowed to be done. We'll go into later. It's not that no work is allowed to be done, no commercial work is allowed to be done, and no new harvesting is allowed to be done. But I'll I'll get there. The Shabbos require to acknowledge, oh, I wrote here, the Shabbos that's required to acknowledge Mother Earth, a built-in mechanism to generate and appreciate the feminine energy. So um we have this, yeah, we have the personal Shabbos in our lives and then the collective Shabbos within the land. You need to rest the land and let the land be. You learn how to be as you can't work your usual job and routine, right? And so for six years, a person could be a farmer and they can be um, you know, selling produce and buying produce and and being a business person. And then for a full year, Hashem says you can't be connected to that identity anymore. And so, as a person is told you need to respect Mother Earth, the land that generates um produce for you, you can't work it and work it and work it. You have to actually acknowledge that it's a godly, um it's a god, a godly reality that it's happening for you. And Hashem says, let her rest. You can't work her for every single um day of the year or for every single year. She deserves to have a full year rest. And when we come to honor that the land needs rest, that the earth needs rest, what happens is we become invited into a rest within ourselves, right? And a person is going to have to practice restraint, holding themselves back. A person's going to be invited to practice how to live life outside of their regular routine, how to live life beyond their identity that they have connected to their job description when they um honor this mitzvah. What I noticed about this mitzvah that I was really appreciating is that everything in the world has an energy and has a force of energy, kind of like um a vacuum or a river that there's movement, there's a lot of um ear being blown in one direction, or a river that's blowing in one direction. And I feel like making money is also a river or um a movement of intense energy. And when a person needs to make a living, they attach to the river and they move along with it, and it pulls them and it propels them towards you know the financial industry or making money. And then comes Shabbos and says to the person, no, I'm grabbing you out of the river. You can't stay in the river for any longer. This is the limit for how long you can stay here. And then it's the same idea of Shemitah, like you can work for six years, and then all of a sudden, this energy, this this the Shabbos energy comes and tells the person, it's time to step out of the river. You were going in it, you were very, very, um, you were moving in it very, very strongly, and it's time to come out of that. I'm gonna pull you. And my like my clarity or my knowing is that these forces that help us make a living are very, very powerful and very strong. And they're not bad. They're they were probably would be considered in the altar of his terms, clippas noga, neutral energy, but they're definitely a force to be reckoned with, right? They have a lot of um intensity and they they go very far and they go very deep. And it it feels to me that it's the feminine, the job of the feminine to come and say, here are the boundaries for how much you could be in that energy. Because Shabbos comes and says to the person, step out of that river. And Shemita comes and tells the person, step out of that river. And so I'm wondering if it's also a wife's um, if a woman has it within her essence to be able to show a marriage, like where are the the barriers, where are the the boundaries? Um if if if the couple or the marriage or the the husband or the wife, right? If they're going too far off into an energy, a neutral energy, or God forbid a not neutral energy, the woman has the capacity to say, like you're you're neglecting your other commitments and your other responsibilities, and you can't see it because this force is so powerful, it could blind you, it could not let you see clearly that you didn't take a vacation in a few months, or you didn't take a break, or you stopped calling your family. Um, somebody who's outside of that energy could help a person have a clearer perspective. So my feah, I have over here, like, you know, this this force of making a living is so powerful that a person could neglect their body, they could neglect exercising, they could neglect eating or being in nature, um, or even taking care of our own souls. And so here comes this energy of the feminine, of Shabbos, of Shemitah, of a wife to be able to say, here are your boundaries, you need to take a rest. It's time for you to step out of this force and to see um who you are and what you want to be when you come and you step back into it. In the Shemitah year, what would happen is that um a homeowner or a property owner would declare that their land is ownerless. They would get go out and make an announcement and they would release all ties of ownership of their own. And then they would be allowed to gather the produce that was growing on its own. During this year, you're you yourself, if you were an owner, you weren't allowed to grow produce, but you could go and collect the produce that had been growing in the past years if you made a statement that this doesn't belong to me and anybody really is allowed to come and take from this field. It became equally available to all people and workers and animals on your property. Even a slave, a bondwoman, a slave, was um allowed to take from the property. Everything became equal for the owner and for the slave working on the property. And I was thinking how, you know, in other cultures, a slave wouldn't even know what the feeling of freedom feels like. But any slave who worked for a Jew, they would come to the year of Shemitah and all of a sudden they would have rights that were on equal level to the actual homeowner. And so, like Judaism has within it this idea of like there's no such thing as a slave who doesn't even get to know what freedom might taste like. They're exposed to freedom so that they can even begin to manifest life outside of slavery. Um, now the Torah goes on to um the Yoval year, the 50th year, the Jubilee year. So Hashem tells Moshe to tell the Jewish people that they should count seven cycles of Shemitah, seven cycles of Shabbos, and that the year following that would be the 50th year, and it will be made special through shofar blasts. So on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, which is Yotishre, an announcement would be made throughout the land that this upcoming year is the year of the Jubilee year, the Yoval year. The court should announce it's a Yoval year on the on the first of Tishre, but then on Yom Kippur they would announce that there was freedom throughout the land. And what did that mean that there was freedom throughout the land? Anybody who was a slave became free in that year, as well as um any land that you purchased in the last 50 years, would the lease would expire, and all your property and all your investments and all the money and the assets you accumulated, they would return to their original owner. So I'm gonna backtrack for a minute here and say that when the Jewish people were in the desert, Moshe instructed Yahushua, I believe, um, on how to divide the land, right? Because Hashem was passing down the land as an inheritance to the children of Avram, Yislak, and Yaakov. And based on the Shaivet you were from, so your father, you inherited a piece, a portion of the land. This was done through a lottery. Um, and so every single male who went into the land, they had a piece of property that belonged to them. And they became national owners. Like they have this asset, this they became, um, they inherited a national inheritance of a piece of property that is designated, they had a deed to a piece of land. Now, what would happen if a person um needed money? They couldn't take care of their land, they couldn't take care of um their responsibilities, they were able to sell a portion of their field to somebody else and who would, you know, who's looking to accumulate more and more fields, and then they would um the owner now had a less of a piece of property, but he had more of a liquid asset that he was able to use. Now the Torah tells us that you can do this up to a point because come the 50th year, any land that you sold would become um expired and any investment would like the lease would be over and the land would return back to its rightful owner. Um, the yoval year had the same laws of Shemitah. All produce had to be declared ownerless, and if you don't, the following year you would have problems harvesting what grew in the 50th year. So yoval and shmitta had similar laws, but in addition to um in the yoval year, you would all slaves went free and all um assets returned to their rightful owner. The produce of the yoval is holy and you were limited to sell the produce commercially. You were not allowed to sell um the way that you would in a normal business year. If you wanted and you needed to, you could sell small amounts just so that you would be able to take care of your other needs. So you were allowed to make a little bit of an income to take care of your basic needs, but those products that you purchased, they would all be considered holy, and there's there would be laws to guide you and how you could use those um items that you took you purchased. Oh, here it says that the food that you harvested and prepared in the yoval year can only be eaten if it's also available in your fields on your land, right? You weren't allowed to be trading commercially, if not um bring your product outside and declare it ownerless. So I think what it's saying here is that you could only eat a product that was available outside. So if you had pomegranates in your home, but you didn't have a growing in your fields for another person to be able to go and take it, you had to go take these pomegranates and put it outside and declare it ownerless. You couldn't be enjoying something that wasn't also available in your field.

unknown 21:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:30

Then the Torah has here the mitzvah that you should buy and sell from a fellow Jew. You should work hard and make it your business to support each other and not cheat each other. If you have the opportunity to give business to somebody who is not Jewish versus someone who is Jewish, here the Torah is encouraging you to buy and sell and to help your fellow Jew make an income. And it says that when you do sell real estate, you have to factor in the years until Yoval. When somebody was going to buy a Of property. They had they had to, the way it worked back then was you would count how many years it was until yoval because you wouldn't want to pay a high price for a piece of land that you would lose access to if it was in four years from now. So the cost of the product was determined based on how many years it was from before yoval until yoval would um happen. Over here we have a mitzvah that you're not allowed to taunt your fellow or give him business advice that is for your best interest. Um, meaning if someone comes to you and says to you, What do you think I should do? Should I do this idea or this idea? And in your mind, you benefit from a certain outcome. So you tell your friend, you go ahead and you do this, but in your heart you're holding on to private benefit for yourself. So the Torah says that you should fear God and you should know that God is in your heart and He's watching to see what you're doing. Your fellow might not know, but Hashem does know. So at this point in the Parsha, um I think the ideas of Shemitah and Yoval are done, and Hashem gives over these commandments to Moshe Rabinu for how the Jews are going to need to show up when they do receive the land. Um, and what's interesting here is that you see how precious and dear this mitzvah is to Hashem because Moshe Rabinu tells the Jewish people in the name of Hashem that even if there are mitzvos that you did not keep and you are guilty of transgressing other very important mitzvos to Hashem, if you keep these laws and you keep them carefully, Hashem promises that a person who does will be able to live in the land with safety, with security, and with satisfaction. So satisfaction in that the produce that the land will produce and yield will fill them up, that will satisfy them and truly nourish them. And they will live without drought. Hashem promises to send rain in all the ways that they need it if they do keep this mitzvah. And my my um, I don't know if I gave this over well enough before, but to me it's like again, this this mitzvah feels like um a foundation of the feminine energy within business. Like if a man is the breadwinner and he's going out to make a living, the the foundation of the entire um agricultural society, the entire economy in Israel was based off of the mitzvah of Shemitha and Yovo. People didn't buy land unless they knew how many years till till Yovo. People didn't buy a slave or hire workers unless they knew how many years until Shemitah. Because in the Shemitah year, all people who worked for you, they had the opportunity to go free. If they didn't want to go free, they would have to go to the court and have their ear pierced. But it was the law that you everybody, every, there was a certain freedom that pulsed through the land when Shemitah and Yoval came. And everything brought the society and individuals back into alignment. The alignment is that Jewish people cannot be slaves because we are slaves and partners with Hashem. So it's not possible for us to take too many years away from that truth. You can, God forbid, make hard decisions. So you need to sell yourself or to work for somebody else. But Hashem says you can only do that for a certain period of time before you are required to remember and live in your alignment that you are a free person. And so Shmita would come and all of a sudden you would be sent back home. You would be free again. Um, if you made business decisions and you became extremely wealthy, but the 50th year would come and all of your assets would go, you may have been able to accumulate some wealth, but your actual fields and your last assets, they would go back to the fellow Jews that you purchased it from. And again, you would be living in the alignment of where does your blessings come from? They don't come from your fields, they don't come from your assets, they come from your connection to God. And then on the flip side, you have if you made really bad choices and you had to sell your property, all your lands, and then God forbid, sell your home. And now you're you're renting a small piece of property on someone else's land because you had to even sell your own land, right? Let's say one generation made a bad financial decision, and then the next generation came and made a bad financial decision. According to Jewish law, it there's no such thing as a bad decision that cannot be corrected because the 50th year would come and it would self-correct. The rightful owner would literally receive back his land and his home. And so there's no mistake that's too big to be corrected. This energy, this freedom would come back into the world and it would demand of the economy that we come back into our core and into our truth. What I'm noticing about this is that the foundation of all of this is a feminine energy. It's the energy of Shabbos, the energy of Shemitah, the energy of Yoval that's going to hold people to their truth until they're to their core and their essence. Um, which tells me that a woman has that inherently in her. Like that's if we want to know who we are, we can look at Chavez and we could look to Shemitah and we could look towards Yoval to know that a woman can bring her family freedom. A woman can demand of her of herself and of her family certain alignment and certain truths. She has that energy that could radiate from her and keep her family financially sound because this was the basis of the economy in the land of Israel. God literally told them, you're not going to have capitalism and you're not going to have communism and you're not going to have socialism. Um, maybe it's a version of socialism because everybody had a piece of land here. But um our economy was based off of Shemitah and Yovo. Okay, so now we come to the question of, you know, it's very nice and it's very beautiful to say that, you know, the feminine energy is going to keep the masculine energy balanced in the world and it won't let it get too out of hand and go off track. But what's a person going to do when they have to feed their family in the seventh year, right? If they say, okay, I want to respect the feminine in my life, I want to respect Mother Earth, I want to respect God, I want to respect my wife and um have this year towards other growth. When am I feeding my children in the seventh year? I'm not going out to work. And so, how how can this possibly be? Hashem makes a promise to us in this week's Torah portion. I will command my blessing for you in the sixth year, and it will produce enough for three years. And so, if a person lives with the faith that I'm not going to work in the next year, and I'm going to already um prepare myself at the end of the sixth year to set things up in a way where I won't have to work in the seventh year, and they make that decision and they live with that bitachon, the promise that God makes is that you won't have to work for three years if you keep that mitzvah. The land is here. I'm going to read the words of the um, oh, it doesn't say it yet. It's actually going to be in the next parsha and buchisai. Okay, so the next mitzvah is that if someone becomes so poor and destitute and they have to sell a part of their land, um, a relative could come forward and help them repurchase it and say, you know, my my nephew um, you know, had to sell this piece of property to you, but here's the money, and I want to redeem this property and give it back to my nephew. The new owner would be forced to sell it. He can say, Well, I already purchased it. The way land worked in Israel was that above business, this piece of land belonged to a family, and you couldn't just treat it like a regular asset that you could just buy and sell. There's a very strong link between a Jewish person and the land of Israel. It literally belong it later in the portion, it's going to say that the true owner of this land is Hashem. So it's not like so clear to say that every single Jew owns a piece of land, but in a way you could say it based on the way God divided up the land in this world, um, is that like there's a bond between a Jew and and his piece of land that cannot be um taken apart for too long. Okay, now there's a few mitzvos um about what happens if the piece of land that you own or the home you own or the field that you own is located in a in a walled city, in a city that has walls surrounding it. Um I don't have too much to say other than if I'm if I'm getting this correct, if I understood it correctly, if you bought a house or a field, you had okay, not in a walled city. I'm sorry, the walled city is the next part. If you bought a house or a field, you had two years to be able to buy the item back from the new owner. If you didn't come up with the money to buy it back, you would have to wait to Shemitah to buy it back. And this is different than a walled city because in a walled city, you would have one year to buy it back, and after that, you would have to wait until Shemitah. Um, no, it says even in yoval, it cannot be bought back. So property that's purchased in a walled city would not return back to um the rightful owner. So here comes the um Hashem telling Moshe that if a person would choose to work commercially, and meaning that they're they're attempting to make a living during the Shemitah year or Yoval year, Hashem is warning them now that they are going to suffer a great financial loss. And at that point, they're going to have to borrow money. And what's going to happen? They're going to have to borrow money, and their fellow Jew is going to charge them interest. And from here we go into the laws about interest, because Hashem says that um if you do not keep this mitzvah, this is what's going to happen. It's a natural consequence that's going to come into the land. And so we have to go over the laws of interest, God forbid, in case Jews start charge, um, in case Jews do work during the Shemitah year. So here we go. It says, if your brother becomes um poor and destitute, you must take pains to support him and help him before he crashes financially. Even if he's a convert or a resident in your land who's not your full brother, if he becomes you have to try and help him before he loses all of his home, his money, his property. If he does become poor, you must loan him money and give him the gift of charity. When you loan him money, you may not take interest from him. Um, I actually wanted to read it inside because I found the words to be really powerful. When you loan him money, you must not take interest from him, as you have been taught. This offense is so serious that Hashem repeats that you must not take interest from him. I know that you will be tempted to consider interest just compensation for the earnings your funds would have made had you not loaned them to your fellow. So therefore I admonish you, I warn you now, you must fear your God and resist this temptation. You might also be tempted to pretend that the money you are lending your fellow is really that of a non-Jew, and that you're just taking interest from your fellow on behalf of this non-Jew. I therefore admonish you now, you must fear your God, for I know the truth. Rather, enable your brother to live with you in financial solvency by loaning him the money interest free. This prohibition against taking interest applies regardless of the form of the loan. You must not give him your money on the condition of being paid back with interest. Similarly, you must not give him your food or anything else on the condition of being paid back with interest. I am God your God who took you out of Egypt. And then the last segment here, um, Hashem says that he knows how hard it it is to keep this mitzvah. He knows that it's the nature of a person when they lend something to another person, they want to be um paid back for it. And so Hashem is saying that with however difficult it is for you to keep this mitzvah, that's how much Hashem promises to give this person a reward for keeping the mitzvah. And it says that you will be given the land of Israel as your reward if you fulfill this. Um, there's like a double meaning over here. Like, what was the reason that Hashem was allowed to kick out the seven nations of Qnaan and put the Jewish people there? Because they weren't following in Hashem's ways. So Hashem is telling them now, like, my ways are that you are not allowed to charge interest to your fellow Jew. And so if you want to be able to live in this land, this land will only hold people who who match its vibration and its frequency. So if your heart is closed to your fellow Jew and you're helping them when they're having a hard time, but in your heart, you're not really helping them. There's you have a business opportunity here. It's not like your full heart is open to trying to help your fellow Jew, then the land itself does not know how to hold such a person. And so, you know, the reward is that you get to live in the land, but the consequence is that the land cannot hold you. Because it says that if a person chooses to work during Shemitah, um he will eventually um suffer a financial loss to the point that he's going to need to sell himself as a bondman. And it's a form of a slave. And if you if if a Jewish person is gonna hire this man who is in this challenge, we're told that we're not allowed to give him work that would publicly reveal that he made these poor choices, right? The new owner who purchases him to work on his estate can't give him public work that would humiliate him, embarrass him, tell him to go schlep a horse in front of the town or hold his clothing. It would be private work on the person's estate so that the person would have his privacy and his um embarrassment respected so that no one would know that he had to sell himself because he became so poor. But you know, the first line here was that if you do not keep the mitzvah of Shemitah, God is telling you you're going to um lose money to the point that you have to sell yourself for work. The person who purchases him has to treat him like you would an employee or a hired resident. You need to give him an honorable um job to do that would bring the person respect. He can only work until the beginning of the yoval year. And whenever the yoval year comes, at that point, you need um to let him go. While he works for you, the owner had the responsibility to feed this person's children. Um, but when the yoval year came, he would no longer be responsible. And the person returned to his family and he resumed his fight his social status like he was before. Um, nothing connected to having been hired. Um he becomes like a completely free person. And over here it says that you treat him like a bondman and not a servant because we are all servants of Hashem. There's a Jewish person who cannot make another Jew feel like a servant because we're all servants. So, what gives me the right to make someone else feel like a servant if we're really all servants of Hashem? If you do hire a non-Jewish bondman or bondwoman, it will come from the nations around the land of Israel and not the land of Israel itself. Um, unless it's from the children of the Knanim who were fathered from a non-a non-Khnani father. So there's just a law here that says that um all the men who lived in the land of Knan were not allowed to stay there. They had to leave or they were, um there was a war and they were killed. And so if you would hire a non-Jewish um bondwoman or man, it meant that their father was not a Knani. And um, if you do purchase such a bond servant, they become your responsibility. They live on the estate, and the estate needs to take care of them. The food has to come from your land, you need to take care of this person. Okay, the next mitzvah talks about what happens if a Jew becomes so poor that they need to sell themselves to a not Jewish person in the land. Um, because it's in the land of Israel, the court system was a judicial, it was a Jewish court system. So these laws actually applied to all of the land of Israel, to Jews and non-Jews, and the law of Yeval applied also. And so this Jewish person would be sold to this non-Jewish person and he would work until the 50th year. And um the not Jewish person is obligated to feed him and his children until this person becomes free in the Jewel year. And we're told as a Jewish community that a relative should try really hard to redeem him and prevent him from um spending too much time in the not-Jewish environment. Number one, because it doesn't, it's not good for his well-being. And so that God forbid his family wouldn't assimilate by spending so many years in a not Jewish environment. When you're working for a not Jewish person, be careful to never bow to their idols and even to never bow to Hashem, unless you're in the temple by the Besa Megdash. Um, and over there you're allowed to bow. When you're living in there in this not Jewish person's land, it says, be careful to keep Shabbos and to fear the sanctuary, the Besamigdash, um, even when you're there. Don't think that I sent you there because I want you to learn from their ways, but hold on to your faith and your and your Torah until you could come back to the Jewish people. And um that actually is the end of the first parsha of Bihar. And from here we go into the second um Torah portion of the Kukaisai, which means in accordance with my rules, right? If we follow Hashem's rules. And the the parsha starts off with um blessings that the Jewish people will receive. So I I find it interesting how um the parsha of Bukhaisai, which begins with the promise of blessings, it's the last Torah portion in the entire Torah. So obviously, it's a message that we have to keep all the laws that were just um written in all the chapters because this is the final chapter. But I also find it interesting that what's right in front of it, like what's the last thing that we're told about right before we have a conversation about the blessings, um, where Hashem says, if you follow these rules, you're gonna be rewarded. So it was the conversation of um Shmita, Yovo, and interest. So I feel like there's a very important place in the Torah and in God's um heart and mind that these mitzvahs are foundational mitzvahs. And um it's almost like the blessings are contingent on these mitzvos more than any other mitzvos, which Hashem actually said. Like it was in this week's parsha that even if you have, you know, you're struggling in other areas of your observance to God, but you keep the mitzvah of Shemitah very carefully, um, these blessings can come your will come your way. So this parsha starts off that if you listen to my rules and you study my Torah so that you understand these rules more and more, you advance in your studies and you learn the Torah because you you intend to keep them and safeguard them and you want to do them as properly as you can. Hashem promises, I will reciprocate your devotion and I will send rain, which is material blessings that exceed the limits of nature. Like because you are willing to go over your nature and you're striving and you desire to keep these mitzvos in the best possible way. Hashem says, I will change nature for you and I will give you more material blessings, more rain than is appropriate according to Teva, according to nature. And not only that, your rain will come in a way that it's convenient for you. It will fall in the right time, which God says it's the Shabbos night when people are not out in their fields working, because if it would rain on a workday, that wouldn't be convenient. It would mean that people have to take a break. Break from their workday. And so over here, it's it's um let me finish this and then I'll say the land will miraculously produce its full yield of produce, even with rain that only comes once a week. The rain will be so potent and so powerful that it will take care of everything that needs to grow in this one rainfall a week. And also the barren trees that according to nature, they wouldn't grow fruit, they will miraculously give forth fruit. Um, if we keep this mitzvah. Um, forgetting now what I wanted to say about this. I think it's this idea that you know, when a person aligns themselves with truth, with the truth of their highest selves, their godly soul, with the way God has a vision for them of how to live down here in this world, which is the waves of the Torah, they bring themselves into alignment. And over here, God is telling you, your blessings will also come at a time when it's in alignment for you. Because, you know, sometimes it, you know, we should, many people would pray for this that God send me the blessing however you want. Even if it's not convenient for you, I'll go out in the middle of the night and I'll put out the vessel and I'll go and I'll collect it. Even if I have to travel for five days away from my family on a business trip to make the money, it's okay. We need the money. I'm happy to go and travel, right? We we all have um ways that we're driving a commute to get to work, having to travel to get to work, having to take a second job to make enough money, but the pain of not having enough to take care of your family is so great that we're all willing to be inconvenienced for the sake of blot of a blessing. And over here, God is telling you that alignment will bring alignment. If you live in alignment, if you live and you follow these laws, your blessings will also come at a time when there's so much alignment for you. It will be you'll get to sleep in your bed at night and you'll have to do nothing. It will come to you at a time when it completely doesn't even bother you. You don't even have to notice it, and all your blessings literally come to your to your door. Um, and we have here the promise that nature will change for a person who lives in alignment, right? Whether that's the amount of blessings that are gonna come their way, and um whether a tree, and obviously a person is compared to a tree. So for all the couples who are struggling to have children, whether they're barren or struggling, the promise here is that when we follow these mitzvos, we will have the children that we desire to have. I'm gonna read it inside Hashem's words. Um There will be so much grain that threshing will occupy you until the grape harvest, and harvesting the grapes will occupy you until the time for sowing the fields again for grain. But you will not need this overabundance for yourselves, since your food will be so miraculously satiating that you will be able to eat a small amount of your food to satiate yourselves. You will live in security in your land without the fear of drought. I will not only bless you with abundance, but will ensure that you can enjoy it securely. I will grant you peace in the land, you will lie down at night and sleep peacefully, for there will be no cause for fear. I will remove even wild beasts from the land, so you will have no fear of them. No foreign army will even pass through your land on its way elsewhere, so you will have no fear that you will be plundered on the way. Um the more it goes on to talk about other armies, but over here I want to talk about how. Oh no, this is actually connected to the army. Hashem says that the more people who keep my Torah and observe the mitzvos that we are talking about, the less numbers will need to go out to war if there is a need for a war. So if there is a need for a war, God promises that when we live in alignment, five Jewish people could go out to war to battle against one hundred of a foreign army. And if you keep the mitzvos even more, a hundred um Jewish people could go out and battle against a thousand enemy army. Your enemies will fall before you by sword in a miraculous way. I will turn my attention to you above all creations. I will make you fruitful by increasing your fertility, and your progeny will be fertile, your progeny will be tall and robust. Ultimately, I will establish my covenant with you in a new and permanent form by making the teachings a part of your nature. I found that to be so powerful about when we do live in alignment, we're living from our highest selves, and there's no fear inside of us. And so when we do go out to war, God is promising us that you're, if the rest of you are busy occupied with keeping the mitzvos, that's what you'll be able to do. Even wartime won't disrupt you living in alignment. Only a few of you will have to go out and form an army because I will miraculously protect you and I will put the fear of God into this, this, this um enemy nation of you, so that very few of you would be able to protect your entire people with Hashem's help. It's this idea that, you know, Israel doesn't have to have the largest army in the world, we just have to be the strongest army in the world. And it's very clear in this parsha that the Jewish people get their strength, the Jewish army gets their strength by more and more and more Jewish people living in observance of their higher truth and being connected to the laws of the Torah. And now the the it returns to the idea of the quality of the produce that we're going to eat, the food that we'll eat that will be produced from the land, the land will have such a high vibration that the fruits and the vegetables and the grain and the wine and the oil, it says that um it won't get spoiled, that will last longer, it will taste better. And Hashem promises that he'll place his permanent dwelling, the Besa Migdash, in our midst, and Hashem's soul, his divine presence, will never depart from us. I will walk among you and you will not be afraid of me, but you will also maintain your reverence for me, even though I'll be with you always, you will always be able to have the respect and the reverence for me. I will be your God and you will be my people. So that's the you know the first half of the Bukhokaisai Parsha. So from here we go into the second half of the parsha, which talks about um the punishments, the consequences, the threats that Hashem says will come our way if we don't keep these mitzvos. I said this in last week's parsha, I think it was last week, but I'll say it again that um pay attention to where you get triggered or feel something inside of you that contracts when you hear the laws, because the more honest we could be with ourselves when we take it as Shem's Torah, the more honest we're being with our relationship with God. And I find that that has been um a turning point in my growth and in my freedom is to be able to be in an honest relationship with Hashem. So I welcome that for you here. And I'm also remembering as I said that that um before we started, I didn't um remind us all, including myself, of we're in our life. We want to invite this energy of Torah learning to be channeled to. So here's a moment to just pause and um reflect on where in your life. Is there a part a contraction or a blessing that you want Hashem to protect or an area in your life that you would love Hashem's um light to penetrate and move through? Moshe goes on to tell the Jewish people that, you know, you just heard all the blessings that are gonna come your way when you live in the land. And if you don't, this is what you can expect to happen. This is uh a pre-warning of what might happen to you or what will happen if you don't follow. Hashem says, if you don't listen and study the Torah, and you intend to insult Hashem, like you intentionally don't follow the laws, and not only that, you start to make fun of people who do keep Hashem's laws, you start making fun of Khereidim or religious people who are trying to keep Hashem's laws, and you reject the words of the sages and the Tamid Chakhamim, and you prevent other people from performing the laws, you break the covenant Hashem. Hashem says, I will send five, I think it's five, or maybe it's seven, um, different forms of a punishment. The first one is disorientation, you're disoriented, you don't, you can't you can't stand clearly, you're confused. The second one is consumption, the third one is blisters, the fourth is a fever, the fifth is diseases that will dash your hopes and depress your soul. You will sow your seed in vain, and your enemies will be able to eat your produce. From all the hard work that you do to make the land grow, it will all be for nothing because I'm going to give all your produce to your enemies. It's very intense, so take a deep breath. When I turn towards you, it's going to be to punish you. You will be hit by your enemies and be ruled by those who hate you. You will flee, but there will be no one chasing you. If I do this to you, Hashem says, and then you choose to continue to be stubborn after that, and you don't turn to God and say, I made a mistake, I sinned, please help me. And you choose to harden your heart at that point, Hashem says, I will take it to the next level and I will add seven more punishments. I will break the temple, the Vesa Magdash, which is which is the pride of your strength, your skies will be dry like iron, your land will be wet like copper, which will cause your produce to rot. Your strength will be used in vain, which will make you very frustrated. Your land won't produce according to the seeds that you planted. The trees will be debilitated and not give fruit. And if you still remain stubborn, I will send wild beasts out onto the fields. Your own domesticated animals will turn against you. They will bother you and your children, and they will destroy your livestock, your animals. Your roads will become empty. And if you continue to act stubbornly, Hashem says, again I will send you the next round, right? There's like round after round after round. Um the next set of um punishments will be that Hashem will send an army to bother you for not keeping my covenant. It's like God will choose an army to come do the work that he for him, and you'll run into a city, but I'll send a plague when you get to the city. So you're gonna run for safety, but you're not gonna find any safety because you'll die from a plague there, or you'll be bothered by a plague. You won't have food, and ten women will have to share one oven because they don't have enough fuel to fuel their own ovens. No matter what you eat, you'll never be satisfied or satiated. And if you continue with your stubbornness, you will come you will end up having to eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters because you'll be hungry. I will destroy your cities. Over here we have like a moment where the Pasak, you know, kind of breaks and it shows a little bit of God's mercy, and it says that Hashem will show you his mercy in the fact that the enemy nation won't want to live in our land because they won't be able to make it prosper. They won't know how to turn the produce to cause the produce to grow from the land. And so the enemies won't be able to want to live in the land for long. But what Hashem says, you will be scattered all around so that you won't be able to be next to each other and comfort each other in the exile. I will allow the enemies to harass you while your land will remain empty. Then the land will appease me in keeping the sabbatical years. So all of these consequences, all of these punishments, they come to this one pasuk that's the main pasuk for me in this whole parsha. I'm gonna read it inside. So it, you know, it feels like what we read is so cruel and so um harsh of God. How could God cause this to us? But for me, it's the the question is how did we do this to ourselves? Before this ever ever happened to us, before we had to go through a timeline, we did come to eating our own children. In the temple times in Echa, when we read on Tishabav, it talks about how people were so starving that they actually, unfortunately, they came to consume their own children so that they could um stay alive or try to stay alive. Before any of this ever happened, we received the Torah and God said, These are my ways. If you want to live in this land, you need to let the land rest. And if you don't let the land rest, I will make sure that the land will rest. It's almost like the feminine has a built-in mechanism, or God has a built-in mechanism that's going to require the feminine to rest. And if we do not allow her to rest, she will find a way to make sure that she rests. And it doesn't feel like this is her choice. This feels like this, like I know so many women who want to be able to do. They don't like that they have to um take a back seat and let things come to them. But this is it's God's will that you see here that Hashem is willing to allow for all of this pain and all of this suffering and all of these consequences to happen, also that Shemitah will be kept. If the Jewish people don't keep Shemitah, God finds a way to make sure that Shemitah will be kept in her land, in the land of Israel. Um, the the land will be forced to rest. Either we're going to give her the rest that she needs, or she's going to take it through all of this pain and all of this challenge. I want to read one more pasak. I will be appeased in this way because during the entire time that the land remains desolate, it will rest the way it should have rested during your sabbatical years when you lived upon it. Okay. Um, now it goes on to say, you know, what happens when, God forbid, we make the mistake and we don't give the land the rest that it needs, or the feminine the rest that she needs. Um Hashem tells us how we go through our process of Teshuvah. So it's like we it's a built, it's a buildup. So first the person um will confess their mistakes and they'll say, I made a mistake, my father made a mistake, and um, we were not faithful and we betrayed you, Hashem. And Hashem says, in the merit of this confession, even though they didn't do a full Teshuvah, Hashem will send them Nveim, prophets and teachers who are going to remind them that they are God's people and that there is a way back home. Maybe then their clogged hearts will become humbled. These are the words of the Torah. They will regret what they did. And even though it's not a full Teshuvah and repentance, Hashem will invoke the merit of the patriarchs and the matriarchs, the Avos and Imahos, will come to the their aid to the aid of the children and redeem them. Hashem says, I will remember the covenant of Yaakov first, because Yaakov took measures to help his children when they would be in exile. Yaaqov foresaw that his children would go into Gallus and he worked in his lifetime to be able to help his children. So God says, I will go to the channel of Yaakov and I will redeem the people and the merit of Yaakov. But if Yaakov's merit isn't enough, I will go, I should say, Yaakov's um merit together with Rachel and Leah and Bila and Zilpah. If that portal isn't um enough, Hashem says he'll go to the portal of Yitzchak and um Rifka, and he'll invoke the Aqeda that Yitzhak was willing to go on. And if Yaakov and Yitzhak's merit is not enough, Hashem will invoke the covenant of Avram and Sarah, and I will remember the empty, um, the land, the promised land that remains empty. And that's the the process of Hashem helping the Jewish people come back into the land through their process of Teshuva. And then the the Torah portion finishes off with a few random mitzvot that are not really connected to this concept, but um we'll go through the mitzvot carefully, and it says that these laws were applicable to Jewish people and not Jewish people who lived in the land of Israel. If someone pledges their life or an organ to God, the money they would um the court or the they would figure out the value of the person's life or the value of the organ that they donated, and the money would go towards the the tabernacle treasury, the Mishgan's treasury, the Basemagdish treasury. If they couldn't afford to keep their pledge, they would go to a Kayin who would help them evaluate how much money they owed and what they could do about their pledge that they owed. Animals could be consecrated to Hashem, even their limbs, in exchange for the value. So if a person couldn't give a full um carbon, they could say, I want to give a certain section of this, and the value would be given to the money. The same thing a person could say, I want a certain field, the produce of a certain field or the value of a certain home or field to be given to the Basemakdash treasury. Firstborn animals of goats, ox, and sheep are gods and they cannot be consecrated, right? Like the firstborn belongs to God, and you can't choose that that should go towards a treasury. It was a separate calculation to God. Um, and then here we have, you know, there's two types of miser tithing. Um, besides for the one that we all have to give, there was a second miser for every year aside for the year of Yoval and Shemitah, you had to give away a tenth of the grain, wine, or oil of your produce to the Leviim, the Levites, as well as in the first, second, fourth, and fifth year, the second miser was that you needed to take a certain amount and eat it while you were in Jerusalem, in Yerushalayim, when you were in a pure state. So it was God's, it seems like there's like this built-in mechanism to make sure that a Jewish person spent time in the city of Yerushalaim, in that energy, in the high consciousness that is in the city. Um, a person was only allowed to eat certain of their foods if they were gonna go to Yerushalaim. So it was God's built-in way of making sure his children came home and spent time in his most revealed presence in the whole world. Animals that were cattle, sheep, or goats were also tithed. Every tenth animal would belong to God and needed to be brought to Yerushalayim to be sacrificed, and um only its fat was burned on the Mizbayah, but the family and the guests of the family ate all the meat. Um, and none of that had to be given to the Kohanim. It was uh the individual's um miser. And um, from here we finish the Torah portion and it we end off with be strong, be strong, and let us strengthen each other. And I I'll just share a quick idea at the end of this um on these ideas of Shemitah and um Yoval on the last two partio. You know, we finish these two partio, and the question that comes is how is this applicable nowadays, right? Right now, if you were to live in the land of Israel, um Shemitah is kept. I'm not sure um what it Means about Yivul. I know that in the Yoval year, the Rebbe made a very big um he pushed people to, it was Shnaz Hakel, the year of gathering, and he would encourage as many gatherings as possible. And there's definitely a holy energy in the year of whenever it's Yoval that we can still keep track of. And the farmers in the land of Israel still have this mitzvah of Shemitah, which they feel, you know, I'm sure adds a lot of complications. I know when you travel to Israel during Shemitah, you're, you know, eating a fruit or a vegetable becomes even more complicated than eating milk or meat, right? The the you have to be so careful with if you want to be keeping these laws of where did this land, where did this produce come from? Was someone bringing it from abroad and working commercially when they weren't supposed to? Because you can only be eating from fields that are nearby. Um, but really the question is that you know, everything up to this point that was spoken about in the Torah was there to give us strength nowadays, right? Outside of the land of Israel. There's an energy in these Torah portions that Hashem passed down through the generations to be able to guide us. So when I come to this parsha, I feel like the mitzvah of Shemitah is giving me the opportunity to ask myself, where in my life do I need to let go of? Where in my life am I gripping too hard? Do I feel like maybe I'm controlling it more than I'm trusting it? Where have I worked for six years? And maybe at this point I can say, I'm letting go and I'm handing it over to Hashem and see where we go from there. Um, whether it's my healing journey, right? Like how many years are you on a healing journey that you feel you have to um you have to do everything in your power to heal yourself. Maybe in this, if you can say that I've I've worked for six years and I come to the seventh year of my life and I could release and surrender control. I'm gripping too hard here. And um, I think that in any place in your life that you feel overworked, you're there's an opportunity here to say, where can I invite Hashem into more and where can I let go? And then the idea of, you know, Yaival asks me, what parts of myself need to be returned or freed, right? In the year of Yaival, anything that was given over to another landlord or another um business partner would return to the rightful owner. And so if Yaival is being spoken about in this week's parsha, I feel that there's an energy available to us to receive parts of ourselves that have been purchased out, have been become owned. So whether that means that, God forbid, my survival self or Klipa or the dark side or my parents, or if I sold a part of my soul or part of my humanness to something or someone outside of myself, outside of God, right now there's this energy of Vyaival present in this week's parsha that's there to tell you you can invite these parts back. These parts are worthy of you, are worthy of these parts returning to you and receiving your full freedom. Yeah. And the last point I wanted to make before we finish this parsha is that you know, whenever I used to hear these um consequences or curses or punishments, um, they felt very scary. It made me feel like, you know, God is a very punishing God and He's like watching over me to see if I make any wrong move. And he's there with a whip and he's keeping track of every mistake that I make. And um it did create a lot of of unrest in me and also a lot of confusion because I also heard about a God who only does kindness and who is always there to support you and always there to take care of you. So in my mind, I didn't understand how the two went together. But what I'm coming to see more and more is like I'm not so sure that these consequences are, you know, from God coming and putting on top of us this consequence. To me, what's becoming clearer is that when Hashem told us we would be his nation by harsinai, and we received a soul, a godly soul, a literally a piece of God inside of us, he told us how we should be able to keep the soul alive and how to make sure that this soul could remain powerful and be able to move through land and move through earth. It's a piece of God, but it's down here in this world. So God told us you need to create a clean reality down here so that my soul, my peace would be able to travel down here in this world. And all of these rules that we heard, you know, about how we need to behave in the land of Israel and how we need to treat each other and how we need to treat our marriages and how we need to treat our spouses and how we have to give carbanos, they were all information for us to help us learn the codes and the tricks for how to allow our souls to move around and flourish in this world. And then what happens when we don't keep, when we don't live in a land or in a society that is a godly society, right? So all of a sudden our soul can't navigate, it can't move, it can't get around, it can't be fully expressed because it needs a certain amount of purity to reveal itself, right? When you're in a dirty environment, you're not gonna go open up and spread yourself, you're gonna hide and keep yourself as small as possible so you don't get dirty. It's the same thing with our soul. It demands a certain amount of clean energy around it so that it can express and take up space and reveal itself. And um it doesn't feel to me that these are God, you know, coming and punishing us. Hashem is literally just telling you the world is made up of positive energy, and there's in the absence of positive energy, negative energy will come. The forces of Klipa, the dark side, they will come into any space that is where there's a vacuum, where there's emptiness. And so either we show up in our truth or the negative energy comes into that space. And it's almost like it doesn't feel to me like an external punishment coming down on top of us. To me, it feels more of these are the consequences of certain behavior. If you charge interest, you are doing something, you are taking an action. That action will invite a certain frequency into the world. The frequency is no growth. Women won't grow, children won't grow, your marriage won't grow, your personal life won't grow, because the action of charging interest will cause that. The action of working too much will, what will it do? It will cause you to be removed from the land. Why? Because there's a certain demand of rest and respect that God requires in this world. So it almost feels like um, you know, in parenting, I heard this idea that you should you never have to punish your children. Let them learn that life has natural consequences, right? It's like if you don't go to sleep on time, tomorrow you'll be tired. That's the consequence. If you don't do your homework, you show up to school the next day and you're you're you don't know the material as well. You're embarrassed when the teacher asks and calls on you. That does a child need an added um level of a consequence to push them into, or could life teach them? So to me, you know, reading this parsha feels like it actually feels very kind. Like these curses feel very, very kind to me that Hashem actually spelled out for us what our actions would create and cause in this world. And so he um he gave us an opportunity, number one, to get ahead of it. To, if we wanted, we didn't have to go down this path. We could have stopped it. And if God forbid, we are we are in stuck in that cycle and we recognize the pattern from opening the Torah and hearing these words, we might immediately be able to recognize where we're holding. If there is a place in our life that needs more of a Shemitah respect, right? If there's a certain part of our own, whether it's a hobby or um a personal need that we have, but we say, no, I need to be working, I need to be working. Over here, God promises us that when we honor and respect all parts of our life, then He would make sure to provide for us in the best possible way. And um I think that the fear of financial insecurity is really, really, really strong. Like the worry of making a living is so, so, so strong. It's not um for no reason that this mitzvah is so hard to keep. And so I think that it takes a man and a woman in a marriage to get on the same page and to believe that Hashem will provide for us if we prioritize raising our children according to our values, if we prioritize building our marriage in the way that we we, you know, we envisioned before we started. Um, because if one spouse really um is not on the same page as the other, it's so easy for them to fall down this path because this energy literally sucks you in. It's very, very terrifying and to feel that you're gonna have to live without being able to take care of your needs. And um when the couple is on the same page with each other and they can both say, God will provide, when we um, it's actually the hayom yum of my wedding anniversary. God, the al-tarebbah had a chasid who came to him, and the chassid started to complain to the al-tarebbah about the financial challenges he was going through. And the al-tarebba told him, You do what you need to do, and God will do what he needs to do. Like you stay focused on the mission that God sent you to do, and God will do his part, which is to cure free all of your needs. And I um it feels like a gift and a blessing that that's the like the bedrack, that the clues and the hints that the the the alterabba and the rebe, the free derebbe provided me with this reminder that at the bedrack of making any money, Hashem is the third partner in your marriage. And when you choose to honor that and you choose to trust in Hashem, um, as a couple together, you can really bring in all the abundance that you desire. So thank you so much for listening and for coming and holding space to share the parsha. Thank you.