Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Last week we said four, invest more, expect less.
It was not poor financial advice. It was very valuable life advice. I hope you remember what that means. Invest more, expect less. Because the intention of that whole message was to set the course for the rest of our work through counting the Omer. If you're not familiar with what counting the Omer is, we can help. We have several teachings on that. There's messages on YouTube, the what of counting the Omer, the why of counting the Omer, and others that we've done through the years. But the whole point, the end point of that message was that we need to do this for ourselves, that God's given us the opportunity, the freedom we talked about to choose to invest in our mental, physical, emotional, spiritual health, relational health. To elevate, to count up, to improve, to leave spiritual Egypt and to leave what is Egypt. It's not spiritual. It's symbolic Egypt. To leave symbolic Egypt in our lives and ascend to spiritual Mount Sinai on Shavuot, from Passover to Shavuot, from the 15th of Nisan to the 6th of Sivan, 50 days. However you want to. However you want to count it, we need to use it to our advantage. But the question remains, how do we dig into this, this soul elevation? Where do we. Well, the truth of the matter is you probably have a pretty darn good idea of what needs work in your own life. You probably know some things you could start with. But since it's my job, I thought we could explore some improvement opportunities together. It's actually not my job. It's my passion. This is what I love. I love to help people be the best versions of themselves. So I'm excited to share an interesting consideration of where we focus our energy over these next days of Sefirot Haomer, that is counting the Omer. And amazingly, you'll be so excited about this.
This connects right back to sacrifice.
I know last week when he talked about the principles of invest more, expect less, you may have thought, thank you, Lord. We're moving away from all that messy sacrif sacrifice talk into something much more palatable and relatable. But that's not happening.
Not so fast. The Torah is still very much talking about sacrifice. This particular Torah portion, shmini, we read these things.
Draw near. Moses says to Aaron, draw near. There's that drawing near thing again. Draw near to the altar. Offer your sin offering. So Aaron drew near. He killed the calf, he slaughtered the goat, he killed the ox and the ram. Man. That's a lot of animals. It's a Lot of sacrifice, isn't it? And those animals, not exactly those, but almost all of those are exactly what I want to focus on today.
So what I want to bring it back around to us though, and the Omer and our soul elevation. Over the past few weeks that led up to Passover, we were studying sacrifice. We were studying particularly the joyful element of sacrifice, the necessity of sacrifice, the fact that sacrifice was going to be a significant component of the kingdom, age and the third Temple. And I received some pretty good feedback from people about these things, you know, people who may not have been as familiar with some of the ideas expressing, hey, that was helpful. I saw a different side of sacrifice. I saw something beautiful. I saw connection, opportunity with Hashem rather than barbaric, bloody cultic practice or even things that Jesus did away with. Rather a beautiful opportunity to make connection. But an objection, a point was raised to me.
Rabbi, you've made sacrifices sound so positive and so beautiful, but I'm wondering, have you forgotten about all the hard stuff that that actually is connected to? Have you forgotten about the atonement aspect? Have you talked about sin, the laying the hands on the animal, confessing sin, transferring? What about the idea of animals serving as an acknowledgement of our sins and failures?
To which I responded, you're right.
I'm so glad you said that because that's what we're going to talk about today.
Let's talk about animals for a second. And I'm. Let's start with the king of the jungle.
And I'm not talking about the lion, I'm talking about you.
Top of the food chain, men and women.
Two aspects within us there in Jewish tradition, we have the yetzer hatov. We have the yetzer hara, the good inclination, the evil inclination. For those that are newer to this idea, I will explain it so briefly. I know it's a concept that many of you are very familiar with. We talk about it a lot. Stay tuned. We're going much deeper on that than usual. The yetzer hatov, the good inclination. It represents our moral compass, our good, the God good within us, our drive to compassion, generosity, connection with God. It's the inner voice within us urging us to do right, to make the good choices even when difficult.
The yetzer hara, on the other hand, often called the evil inclination, which we'll see is very difficult to attach to it, but nevertheless it isn't actually about being evil in the way we might think.
It is more appropriately expressed as our self centered drives, our desires to pleasure, recognition, self preservation. In other words, your Animal side, your natural side, the side that we share with all created beings, this yetzer hara. And the thing is, we need both inclinations because without the yetzer hara, we wouldn't build houses, we wouldn't start businesses, we wouldn't even get married because we wouldn't have any drive for self preservation, protection or eating or anything. These are very natural things that come along. And the challenge therefore is not eliminating it, but channeling it properly. These two inclinations, they pull us in different directions and they create that internal struggle that we experience every time we face a decision to respond kindly or speak a harsh word back to somebody. Whether to give charity or keep more for ourself, whether to wake up and pray, do the morning routine, which would be good, or to hit the snooze button. This is a spiritual struggle. And we experience those tensions within us. These are the inclinations. And our sages in Judaism teach that this is precisely why the word of God was given. This is why the Torah exists. We read in the Talmud, it says so too. The Holy One, blessed be he, said to Israel, my children, I created an evil inclination which is the wound, and I created Torah as its antidote. If you are engaged in Torah study, Torah study, you will not be given over unto the hand of the evil inclination. As it is stated, if you do well, shall it not be lifted? One who engages in study lifts himself above the evil inclination. So Torah in this perspective is not just a set of laws and stories. It's a divine instrument. That's what it's for. It's a divine instrument with a purpose to specifically help us cultivate and strengthen the good within us, the yetzer hatov. And when we live by that wisdom, we don't just gain knowledge. We reshape our inner landscape. We fortify our capacity to make good decisions. We do things that are aligned with the highest good because that's what that is connected to the highest good, the good of God within us. So we've established this fundamental concept of these two compelling forces. But I want to explore today a parallel concept that gives us. Probably it's more complex, it's more nuanced, I would say, but it is an expansion of this competing internal drive, what you might actually call the higher self and the instinctual self. And we find this within Hasidic thought, what we might call the Jewish charismatics, that this idea, which moves somewhat beyond traditional Judaism, has this recognized. You know, Judaism certainly almost universally would see the yetzer hara, the Yetzer hatov. But what Hasidus suggests is that it's not just two impulses. Actually within you are these two systems. One that reaches up toward God, toward ethics, toward meaning, and the other that's more focused on comfort and survival.
And they aren't good versus evil in the dramatic sense. They're more like, again, the pull between conscious and conscience and comfort and between what's holy and what's easy. And the terms for these, in this way of thinking are nephesh elohit, the godly soul, a spark of God from desiring truth and oneness, and Torah and mitzvot and cleaving to God. And the nephesh habehamit, which is the animal soul, self centered, instinctual, survival driven, focused on comfort, pleasure, personal gain. And so what we find, it's a little confusing, but what we find is this. The yetzer hara, which we talked about, is the animal soul expressing itself when it is not refined or elevated. This is you random, okay?
And that's where we get the idea of evil inclination. It is the behavioral expression of the unrectified animal soul. But when it is drawn by the godly soul, when it surrenders and allows to be corban, to be brought near, then it becomes holy. The animal soul is not evil, it is untamed.
Need to understand that distinction.
If you elevate it, it becomes the fuel for the godly soul. Why? Just like an animal can carry more than a man, so too the animal soul can bring you to a greater passion and service when you harness it. This is the idea. Now, I know for some people that's way beyond the pale. It's okay. This is thinking way out of traditional Christian boxes. I get it. That's what we do around here. It's a Jewish box. And the Jewish box is very big and very deep.
So what does this have to do with animals? Sacrifices, us, the Omer. Here's the great stuff.
Unlike some spiritual traditions that teach escape from the world, monasticism, Judaism, and this is something I constantly encourage people to see. Judaism embraces a different path. The Torah does not expect or ask us to reject our animal nature or to flee from worldly existence. The Torah provides a blueprint for elevation. That's what it does. And its purpose has never been to crush these natural drives, but channel them toward holiness. When we study, we're not denying our humanity. We're fulfilling it in its highest form. So you consider this week's Torah portion, which is called Shmini.
Shmini has a lot of mitzvot, some of them particularly around food. The Torah does not tell us to stop eating. That is a denial of our physical reality. It teaches us instead to eat with intention, with gratitude, with boundaries that make the very act of eating something holy. That's the distinction. The laws of kosher, they take one of our most basic animal instincts and transform it into something that is an opportunity for mindfulness and for connection.
You look at the mitzvot surrounding sexuality, they're in there. They're in the Torah. It doesn't reject that powerful drive. It provides a framework in which we should operate with that. It's connected to relationships. It's a sacred bond. Even our aggression, our aggressive impulses, they're not actually meant to be eliminated. They're meant to be channeled. The passion that leads one to anger can be channeled into righteous action, into protecting the vulnerable, into doing good things. Fierce love that defends family and community. And so the Jewish ideal is expressed this way. The task of the religious person is not to flee from the corporeal, from the natural, but to approach and encounter the physical and through it, to engage with the metaphysical, the spiritual, the bigger. And this.
Simply put, we're not looking to escape, we're looking to engage. We're looking to elevate. This represents for me very much the misunderstood words of Yeshua that are translated into in it, not of it. When it comes to the world, that's not exactly what he meant. He means that you are constantly pursuing a higher manifestation in this world while giving good to everyone around you. It doesn't mean you go hide in a cave.
And the profound connection between our souls and sacrifice is this. And we credit Rabbi Schnur. You can say that, or you can say, if you are a Ashkenaz guy Zalman, he is one of the founders of Chabad, actually, of this Hasidic school, and he has this very revolutionary insight. In the temple period, animal sacrifices, of course we know and we've studied, were central to Jewish worship. But what was happening, this is what we've talked a lot about. Was God somehow pleased by the slaughter of the animals and the guts and the blood? And, you know, did he need that blood and flesh? Did he need it? Of course not. What God desires is the drawing near that we've discussed. And part of that process was the transformation that went on through this animal sacrifice. Now, that transfers directly to us in this way. That process of an animal on the altar involves a transformation.
And for us as well, those who possess an animal instinct or a natural drive, we have the opportunity as well to place our animal onto the altar.
Now, stay with me. Remember that the word sacrifice, corban, means to draw near. It's crucial. That tells us that the purpose of sacrifice is not destruction. It's proximity. It's, I want to be close. When a korban was offered, we're not giving something up. We're actually bringing something close. So Rabbi Zalman suggests something profound that when the ancient Israelites in the temple, when they brought the animals, it was a very deep symbolic act beyond the physical. His interpretation was that the physical animal represented what I explained to you this, this animal soul within us, and that the death of that animal, the ending of its physical existence, actually mirrored the spiritual work that we, too, are meant to undergo. This means putting to death certain aspects of animal inclinations that limit your spiritual growth.
The smoke rising from the altar symbolized how the most basic drives can actually be elevated into something pleasing, redirected. The worshiper wasn't really. It wasn't just destroying the animal. They were elevating the essence. And so in the same way, when we approach God with metaphorical sacrifice of our uncontrolled or untamed animal instincts, we're not destroying. We're actually trying to transform. We're trying to draw them closer to holiness. And when you think about that, when we engage in the deep and meaningful work of soul correction, the difficult work of bringing something to God and saying, I want you to take this aspect of me, we get a beautiful connection of bringing something of sacrifice, and we understand an application of sacrifice in our lives today. We don't have a temple, we don't do animal offerings, but we absolutely still have inner work to do on our own animal.
Every time the impulses are redirected toward holiness, every time we redirect selfishness into opportunity, we're engaging in the meaning of sacrifice. A transformation, a drawing near an elevation. Leviticus 1:2. We find three categories of sacrifice.
Some Hebrew, Bechimah, Tson, and Bakar. Bakar. I'll tell you what they are quickly, because this is where Rabbi Zalman draws out these profound meanings. These are not arbitrary choices that the Torah makes. Each type of animal represents different aspects of your own animal nature.
The behemoth is the domestic animal. Okay, Cows, domestic things. In Hebrew, you've heard the word behemoth, right? Behemoth. This is a Hebrew word. Behemoth refers to the cattle, the sheep, the goats, as opposed to wild animals.
And these animals, when you think about cows, they are docile. They're pretty predictable. They're reliant on routine they search human needs. They're raised in safe, enclosed environments. They don't hunt, they don't roam. They don't take risks. Their behavior is shaped by human imposed restraints. Now, the spiritual or psychological analogy that we draw here from the rabbi is the behemoth equals your comfort zone, okay?
That part of ourselves that prefers what is safe, what is known, what is routine, is our instinct to seek only comfort, only security, predictability rather than growth, rather than risk, rather than transformation. And just as a domesticated animal doesn't usually go out and push its limits or seek how to excel to the best of its ability, today we often settle into these spiritual life routines, safe choices that are not challenging. And this is why. Musar literature, Hasidic literature, the behemoth, that part of us symbolizes.
It symbolizes what resists being stretched, spiritually or otherwise, when we say, why change? Why grow this? Let's just keep grazing here. This is completely fine. I don't need anything else. Listen, our desire for security, comfort, predictability. How many of us do things stay places because it's comfortable? We know there's so much more we could do. There's so many great things. Whatever the situation is. How many times have we avoided taking steps of faith? It would mean stepping out of my comfort zone. I can't do that. Let me stay in the pen. Let me graze.
Let me ask you, when we sacrifice this behemoth, we're not saying that comfort is bad, okay? That's not the point. We're saying that we will not let our need for comfort limit our spiritual growth. To be unwilling to change because it's hard work or because it's difficult or because it's painful. And when you connect it to the omer, when we examine our character traits, the behemoth asks you, where have I become too domesticated? Where am I trading comfort for complacency?
Where have I confused comfort with complacency? Being willing to put that aspect of our animal soul on the altar is a brave but faithful move.
The next category is called son. This is the flock effect. The sheep and the goats, they represent our instinct to guess what conform, to just track right along our herd mentality. That's what sheep and goats do. They are herd animals. They move as a group. They don't assert themselves. They're not built to lead. They're built to just stick together. It's not wrong. It's just their nature. It's what they do. Tson. It represents the part of our animal that just wants to blend in just wants to fit in and it's fine. Sometimes that's harmless. But when it keeps us from living with integrity, or again, elevating. When you speak up for what matters, even quietly, you're sacrificing your sown when you say, I don't need to be a part of the herd if the herd is going in the wrong direction.
And there are many, many opportunities to see this in our world today. But the good news is, every time you do it, every time you break out, you're not just breaking away from something, you're drawing near. You're putting the herd mentality on the altar. You're drawing closer to God. And speaking of breaking away, the last one, which I said is bakar, which is from this word in Hebrew, boker, which means morning. The sun breaks through the night. Bakar refers to large animals, oxen, bulls, rams.
They aren't timid sheep.
These are powerful. They charge, they break fences. They're built for action, they're built for momentum, they're built for dominance. The bakar, it is breakthrough energy. Think about it.
How often have we pushed too hard for what we wanted at the expense of other people's feelings?
Just bulldoze them, run them over. How many times do we miss hearing things because we're so anxious to just get our part in there? How many times does this manifest in family life, arguments with spouses, with children? It comes from an insistence on being the bull, being right, having to push our perspective, necessary, just busting through, reacting harshly to criticism, because no one's going to come at me like that. I'll run you over.
This breaking through mentality, and sometimes it doesn't hurt others, it hurts you. Because there are fences in your life that are there for a reason, and we just disregard those things. We charge ahead like cattle breaking through a fence. It is not good. When we sacrifice that bakar nature, we sacrifice our selfish and impulse, our need to dominate other people. So we summarize Zalman's three animals. This comfort, the choice of choosing the sacrifice, is the choice of choosing discomfort for the sake of growth, conformity. The sacrifice is speaking up, being brave, being bold, being distinct if it's asked of you, and control the sacrifices, respecting the fences, pausing, listening, respecting boundaries, being kind, not a bully. And it's a beautiful thing. Again, no temple, no altar, no actual blood, no animal other than our own, which as much as it did in the temple times, it still represents something that needs to be placed on the altar. And we find this incredible personal connection when we're willing to do this kind of work.
So one last thing, and by this one last thing. This is the beauty of paying attention here to just one thing. During times like this, during the omer count and these soul correction, Heshbon Hanefesh accounting of the soul periods in the calendar, there's a tendency, I know, for like a tearing down of ourselves. Well, we need. Gosh, there's so much wrong with me. We got to change everything. We got to throw our whole life on the altar. We've got a radical transformation that must take place. I want to suggest something different to you. Sometimes I think it's something actually that I think is much more realistic with the way that we grow, the way that we change, the way that we mature. Is when you brought a sacrifice, you didn't come in with all your farm animals on a leash and just throw them all up there on the once goat, the ox, the ram.
One at a time, one at a time. We don't try to change everything at once. As a matter of fact, the more you try to change without fixing one thing first, it leads to disappointment. It's a gradual process and we don't think in terms of what needs to be killed, what needs to be destroyed.
There are some things, I'm sure, in all of us that need to be destroyed, but that's not the go to messaging these sacrifices are about. They aren't about losing something precious. It's about transforming this ordinary thing into holy. We bring our comfort zones, our herd mentality, even our aggression. We bring these things in and we say, all right, God, these animals in the sacrificial system, they weren't really magical creatures. Something happened.
When they were put on the altar, something happened. And so I'm going to do the same thing with today, this goat.
And that's a start. And that's something good. As long as you know what the goat actually means, what your goat is what gets your goat.
So my challenge is this. Today, pick one thing, just one thing. Maybe it's already rolling around in your head like a marble. I want you to take a moment, just think about it. What one aspect of your animal soul could you just throw up there? What could you work on transforming Judaism? Listen, there's a whole list. There are omer calendars by week, by day, attributes. Do this, this thing, this day, this, this, this. They're beautiful. They're wonderful. I'm not saying anything's wrong with them. I love them. I've used them. We've done that here. But right now I'm simplifying it down to just one thing.
Just one thing. Start simple. Commit to developing this idea of conquering it. And I want to say it clearly. I don't believe for a second that when I give messages like this that people in our community are like, despicably wicked sinners who have all this horrendous work to do. That's not my suggestion. I'm not trying to break you down again. I'm trying to elevate you to find just one thing and get started with it. Because I do think that, like every human being in the world, we have areas of persistent struggle. Maybe we deny them. We blame other people. Hint, hint. Last week's message. It's not about anybody else. It's about you. So you choose this one thing.
I have a really bad habit of when someone's talking, all I can think about is what I'm going to say to respond to them. It's a very human condition. It's a sort of Bakar thing. It's a sort of bullying breaking through. I can look very intently, and all I'm thinking is, I wish he'd stop talking so I could say what I want to say, because it's much better than what he's saying.
That's an attribute that doesn't have any use in the world, because true relationships are formed when I'm making eye contact and I'm listening and I'm letting you talk and it's processing and it's coming in, and then I can respond or not.
I could just be a listener. Man, how many women want their husbands to just be a listener, not a fixer?
Almost everyone. Now, the beautiful part is this.
This is not your only chance for this. Of course we have. Before you know it, we'll go through these 50 days. Maybe you'll have just one thing, and that'll be a huge win, and I'd be so happy for you. And then before you know it, it will be the month of Elul, and we'll be leading up to the High holidays. And guess what? We'll do this again. And you can pick another thing. Or maybe Rosh Chodesh, the month of iyar, the turning of the month in Judaism. That's a little mini Yom Kippur idea. That's a little mini opportunity to focus on something and say, hey, here's something that needs renewal, like the moon. So maybe you have one thing that you do at Rosh Chodesh, but what I'm saying is you have plenty of opportunities so there's nothing wrong with just picking one thing and you know what it is. So here it is. All this talk about animal instincts and three kinds of sacrifices. And all of it, it's still very positive because positivity describes and surrounds the sacrificial system. It's still about this joy and the necessity. This one we're talking about today is just really internal. It's just really personal.
It's not putting something out there. But you know what? You be intentional. Maybe you should put it out there. Maybe you actually should. Your practical step is to think on this tonight. Open your notes app, your calendar, write down the one thing you're going to work on this week. Make it real. Get started. Maybe you need to share that with somebody that's close to you or someone that you trust or a mentor. Say, listen, I got this. This needs work and I'm going to. I'm going to work on it. Maybe you want to choose to keep it between you and God. Fine.
Just one thing and you watch step by step, day by day, that an area can begin to transform in your life. And listen, when you visualize it giving it over, laying it down, transforming it and seeing it as God, using something for good in your life, that makes sacrifice. That's what it's really about. Not destruction, not transformation. So we'll give these animal natures to God. We're not losing anything. We're becoming more fully something.
So I pray that your Omer elevation, not Homer, that's the Simpsons. You're Omer elevated elevation is blessed by God. If you will be willing to do the required work.
Mmm. Shabbat Shalom.
[00:32:55] Speaker B: I'm Darren with Shalom Macon. If you enjoyed this teaching, I want to ask you to take the next step. Start by making sure you subscribe to our channel. Next, make sure you hit the like button on this video so that others know it's worth their time to watch. Last, head over to our website to learn more about Shalom Macon, explore other teachings and events, and if you're so inclined, contribute to the work that we're doing to further the kingdom. Thanks for watching and connecting with Shalom Macon.
