Bo - Slapping Pharaoh in the Face

3:00 What is Moshe Rabbeinu? Moshe Rabbeinu is what we're going to call for the purposes of this year. We're going to call it your conscience. That inner voice inside of you that says this is right and this is wrong. So that's why Moshe Rabbeinu in the Torah He's not described as an eloquent person. Moshe Rabbeinu was not described as an eloquent person. Moshe Rabbeinu was described as a person with a stutter. In other words, the conscience of a person is a smaller voice, a quieter voice. It's not always the voice that you follow and there's no problems, especially when you're confronting Paro, because what very often happens because of the Paro in our lives is that you basically have what you believe to be true, and then there's the gap between showing up wholeheartedly, and then there's the conscience telling you to do better, and sometimes it's hard to access that.

4:02 Sometimes you might convince yourself that something is not true when it's obviously true, but because your conscience is being pushed to the side. So sometimes, for example, if a rebbe gives a person mussar and the Talmud goes. The only reason you want to push back is because in that moment you're not deeply connected to that Moshe Rabbeinu part of you. You're in a place where you're not actually paying attention. There are certain things that are appropriate and certain things that are inappropriate. But you can convince yourself that something inappropriate is appropriate because you're disconnected. So that voice of Moshe Rabbeinu comes up. It's not a clear voice. It's not an obvious voice. That voice of Moshe Rabbeinu comes up and says, 'This is not right.' This is not right. We most of us live our lives that way, in this sort of tension of what I know to be true, the gap between my head and my heart, and this inner voice that says, 'Yeah, but let's do more.' That's called Moshe Rabbeinu.

5:06 And most of the time we can't stifle that voice. That voice comes up. You ever have a time where you want to do an avera and then a voice inside of you wells up and says, 'Don't do the avera,' and you literally talk to it and go, 'Shh, I'm not interested in talking to you right now.' You ever have that where you literally have an inner dialogue? So that's the Moshe Rabenu coming up from inside of us, and that Moshe Rabenu we're trying to push out. Is that not the Yitzhar? So it's what do you mean? Is Yitzhar pushing it out? The other voice that's like. Is that not the Yitzhar? But again, I'm not so interested. Most I'm not. I'll be honest with you. I'm not really interested in talking about Yitzhak Har Yitzchak Tov. It's a little bit more profound than Yitzhak Har Yitzchak Tov. It's not. I don't even want to think about it like that for a moment. I just want to think about like a very simple thing. There's a voice inside of us that we cannot stifle, though it's not always clear. It's not like a loud voice. It's not a clear voice. But there's a voice inside of us that is. We'll see in a moment. Always eternally attached to Hashem.

6:14 And it's that voice that's guiding us to be better in our lower moments. That's called your conscience. The orif is disconnected. And the orif is the disconnection that we have in our lives. I wouldn't need a conscience if I didn't have a paro in my life. If I didn't have a paro, that which I know to be true would automatically be in my heart, and I would live life in a genuine way. Let me just finish this point before I get to Levi, and the idea then becomes. That Moshe Rabbeinu is ki min amayim mishisihu. He's drawn out from water. The difference between water and land creatures is that water creatures need to always be surrounded by water. If you take a water creature out of the water, it dies. A land creature doesn't live in the same way with the same yinika. He's not drawing in the same way. Moshe Rabbeinu, this conscience that we have, this inner voice inside of us that always tells us what's right.

7:04 So that voice is always attached. In other words, in its natural state of being, it lives an attached life. This voice cannot be squelched, it cannot be destroyed. It's the part of you that's eternal. You'll never be so broken that Moshe Rabenu's voice in your life will be gone. It's always going to be piping up inside of you and saying. Do better. It's that little voice because it's mina mayim mishisiu. It has that concept. So the question is, how do we relate to Moshe Rabbeinu in our life? How do we relate to this conscience that we have that tells us to do better when we're not doing well? So most people, right? They don't necessarily like that voice. It's an annoying voice because they'll say I have these things that I want to do. And you're getting in the way of what I want to do. Of course, the only reason you want to do those things to begin with is because there's a disconnect between your head and your heart. If you were deeply connected between your head and your heart, then you would be. Then your desire would, of course, be to do higher order things. But in our state of disconnection, we very often want lower order things.

8:21 What part of us wants that lower part? The part that again, not getting into any of the psychology right now. In our state of disconnection, we yearn for trivial things. Is we're willing to sacrifice The let's say just as an example, I might be willing to sacrifice a truly intimate relationship because it comes with vulnerability and the possibility of pain. I might be willing to trade that for the cheap thrill of a relationship. But only because I'm in a state of disconnection between my head and my heart. If I was in a state of connection between my head and my heart, then of course I would want the higher order thing, which is the intimate relationship. If we truly want that, then why do we push it away? I think that's the part you missed—that because we're disconnected between our head and our heart. So now, So now The idea is as follows: So how do we relate to the gap between our head and our heart? How do we relate to the gap between our head and our heart? So that conscience comes up, and it's annoying.

9:21 It's annoying. You're making me miserable. I'm trying. I want something. I'd like to go do this right now. And I don't want to pay attention to the deeper thing. But we also don't want that voice to die As much as that voice inside of me is making me miserable I do respect that voice. I know it's right fundamentally. I know it's the way I ought to be living my life. And I know that as long as that voice is alive inside of me, I know I still have hope. In a certain sense, even though the conscience is annoying to us And as much as we might want to get rid of it, we actually don't want to get rid of it. There's a respect that I have for it because I know ultimately that it's giving voice to my highest self. But even more than that, not only is it giving voice to my highest self, I know that without it, all hope is lost.

10:21 Let's just say, as an example, there's a possibility for an addict to go so far over the edge that he no longer has the voice inside of him telling him this is wrong, and at that point He's in a bad place. That's the really bad place, Great. So. As in other words, as long as the addict says, 'Come on, man, you should go to rehab.' As long as the addict is saying, 'Go to therapy.' As long as the addict says, 'Show up to a meeting, go to your sponsor.' Right, so there is a voice of hope. What causes that voice to go away? So that's exactly what the sheir is about. The sheir is about how it is possible to lose that Moshe Rabbeinu voice. What would a person have to do in their lives in order to lose that Moshe Rabbeinu voice? How does one get to a place where thought that the heart is what's annoying, but the Oref phase is what's annoying.

11:15 The Oref is not annoying either. The Oref, you're saying, how do I get to a place where the Paro becomes annoying? Also, that's what Ezehasham, but we're going to answer them this year. Are we going to answer how to get rid of the Paro? That that's the same question. But say it. But interestingly, if you've been following. So now something starts to come into focus. In the beginning of the year, we said for nine plagues Moshe Abenu's voice was welcomed in the house of Paro. But after Makaschoshech, everything changed. In other words, now the operating system of this Moshe Rabbeinu voice, sort of being that conscience in the face of that Paro disconnect, all of a sudden Moshe Rabbeinu is no longer welcome. In other words, this the Torah is telling us this story, which has a psychological element to it, where the Torah is basically saying now the conscience is no longer welcome, and it's been pushed away, and that's why Paro says we're done.

12:22 Something changed now by Makas Choshech, We're done, we're no longer interested in having your voice here. That's a radical shift because most people don't relate to their Moshe Rabbeinu voice that way. Most people relate to their Moshe Rabbeinu voice as a voice of respect. And ultimately, a voice of hope. So Paro got to a stage. When we talk about the destruction of Paro, Paro got to a stage where he no longer respected Moshe Rabbeinu's voice, and it no longer served him in any way. It didn't give him any hope. He was done with that voice. The question is, as we look at the Makos, right, and the buildup of the first nine Makos, right before Makas Bchoros, what happened by Makas Choshakh? Why was that the crescendo, so to speak? Where now, Moshe Rabbeinu is out. You gonna try to offer a solution? Can I make a comparison? I don't know if I missed in the beginning, but is it trying to say that Paro is an addict to something? Because it sounds like the makos of the chorus was his rock bottom, and all these steps are what an addict sees.

13:23 Let's see. So now we're gonna go through each one of the ten plates. Each one of the asar makos, we're gonna go through all of the ten plagues, and I'm gonna show you in each one, I'll pick habala from the altar rebbe, what each one means, what's the positive midah, what's the negative midah, and how the makah related to it to undo it. As we said in Tanya last year, a person is made up of ten faculties, three are intellectual, seven are emotional. So too the makos. They are going to be seven emotional and three intellectual, and it's going to be obviously as I'm sure you could already imagine. It's going to be from the bottom up. In other words, we're going to start at Malchus. We're going to start at the lowest level, the emotional one. We're going to go all the way from Malchus all the way to Bina Chachma, and then what's called Kesser, Crown.

14:20 Sometimes you can measure the ten and three with Chachma Bina Das. Sometimes you can measure them with Keser Chacham Abina. Today we're going to do with Keser Chacham Abina, and you'll see why. Keser means crown. We'll explain when we get there. So the first thing that you have to know is that Malchus, for our purposes Represents confidence. Confidence could obviously be a very good thing, because confidence could tell you there's a task in front of me, and Hashem gave me the capacity and put me in this moment in order to be able to do with the moment what it is designed to do, which is bring Hashem down into this world. Every moment is like that. And so, a Yid who faces a trial and a tribulation, because no Jew has ever said the word trials without tribulations. And vice versa. A Jew who's facing a trial and a tribulation has the confidence to know that Hashem designed me for this moment. Of course, there's a negative side of confidence, and this is what we're going to call the Egyptian side. So there's the Jewish side and there's the Egyptian side. Egyptian confidence is basically where I use my position of power that I have, that confidence that I have to dominate others.

15:46 You ever see that there's confident people who live in service of others, and then there's confident people who turn others into their servants? When that chas v'shalom occurs That is what leads to the slaughter of people. If you think about the midah of makas dam, why were the Mitzrim punished with dam specifically? Because it spoke to the Mitzri confidence, the Egyptian confidence, to slaughter Klal Yisrael, to subjugate Klal Yisrael, to dominate in a way that's unhealthy, as opposed to the Jewish confidence, which is exactly the opposite of that. It's the confidence that I have in this moment. I was born. I have blood. I was born in this moment to serve, as opposed to this. I am going to use my confidence to slaughter. That's Makasdam. That's Malchus. From Malchus, we now go up another notch. What's the next plague? The next plague is, of course, Svardeya.

16:46 Svardea, right, is Yisod, right? That's the that's the ninth of the ten Spheros, And this is the Yisod, the Mida of intimacy. That's intimacy. What's intimacy? In a healthy state, intimacy is warm, it's vibrant, it's connective. Frogs are exactly the opposite. Frogs are hatched in cold climates. Do you guys know that female frogs generally hatch their eggs into water, and then they become tadpoles from there. Land living frogs when they hatch their eggs, they do it in cold and moist holes right in order for the child to be born. But an interesting thing here is That because of this system, frogs are not born with fathers. The mothers raise the children, but frogs are not born with fathers, and therefore there's a sense of detachment that a frog has. In other words, intimacy is meant to bring two things together, but there's a cold intimacy. This is an Egyptian intimacy that's apathetic.

18:09 Right? It's it's detached. So it makes sense that in Mitzrayim where it's not a place of connectivity, it's a fragmented place. There's not a sense of intimacy. What was the makah that came to undo that? That was the makah of frogs. This is very important. Again, last year we did a whole share on Pesach. Imagine if you inculcated this into your Hagada process. You actually took the time as you're reading the Hagada to say instead of just doing dam tzvardei and putting your finger into the cup and putting it right and dropping the drips. Imagine if you actually said, "what are the intimate relationships in my life that I'm showing up to in a fragmented way, that I'm showing up too cold, I'm not showing up too warm." Then there's kinim. What are kinim in Israel? Kinim is a Is a common plague. In America, you guys get checked for lice.

19:05 What's the flip side for Jews? For usodans? For the warmth, true healthy intimacy. Kineh are lice, and this represents hod. Hod means submission. What we submit to. So obviously there's a submission that a person undergoes in their life that when they submit to it, it empowers them. For example, when you submit to a higher power, you don't lose yourself; you find yourself. So like somebody in Alcoholics Anonymous, when they recognize that there's a higher power, it's the discovery of self. The Egyptian notion of submission is what I submit to something lower than myself, and because I submit it to something lower than myself, that type of humility actually crushes you. It takes away your joie de vivre. Your joy of life. It takes away your passion for life because when you submit to something higher than yourself, you actually expand. But when you have an unhealthy submission to something, then you're a slave to it.

20:14 And it crushes you For example, the drug addict who submits, so to speak, to something significantly lower than him, he submits to that drug. You actually see him, even though he might be laughing his head off while he's high, but you actually see the life being sucked out of him, and especially as you go into even more serious drugs. You start to see that the person really falls apart fundamentally. So far what we have, and that's why Keenam makes sense because Keenam are basically like these, I hate to say it like this, but these almost like blood-sucking Worthless creatures who like to suck the life out of you, right? So obviously no creature in Hashem's world is worthless, but that's what kinim do. They like to suck the vitality out of your life. So far, what we have is three of the lower midos, right? Malchus, Yisod, and Hod. Malchus is as we spoke about already. That was blood, right? What did we say blood was, Rabo Say? We say blood was confidence, right? Confidence, healthy confidence, unhealthy confidence. Then there was the frogs that was intimacy.

21:21 Warm versus cold. Now we've dealt with kinim, which is what should I submit to? Imagine you're a Jew in Mitzrayim; you were there for 210 years. You were sliding back into this culture. I think a lot of us can probably identify, even in today's culture in Western society, a lot of these midos are very prevalent. These Egyptian midos are still very prevalent. From there, we go into arov. What's arov, guys? Arov is these wild beasts. These wild beasts. And that represents Netzach. Netzach represents a person's ambition. Ambition can be very healthy, or ambition could be very destructive. Healthy ambition is Hashem created me for a purpose. I'm aligned with that purpose. I'm ambitious about that purpose. I wake up in the morning, passionate, ready to go. I was born today for a reason. I'm self-actualizing. I'm bringing Hashem into the world every single day a little bit more. So I'm an ambitious person.

22:26 On the other hand, you see people that are ambitious. They're not lazy. They're tremendously ambitious. But what does their ambition do? It runs other people down. They're devouring beasts. They're aruf. There's all about how I can get ahead. If I have a business deal, my ambition is not for you to get a win and for me to get a win, but it's how do I get the most money out of you. And these people are very often successful. In their companies They'll rise to become CEO. But sometimes what you see is these. I think often what you see is with these very quote unquote ambitious people, even though it's the destructive side of ambition, what you'll see is that in their personal relationships with their wives and with their children, they're ambitious in a very unhealthy way because those things are let's say I only wanted the wife and the kids in order to look good to be a part of the community. So there, the ambition might destroy the same CEO who walks into a meeting and his destructive ambition might get the company that contract.

23:28 You'll see a trail of devastation in his wake in his personal life. Arav comes to be massacred in the midst of inappropriate ambition. What's the main difference between Arav and Dam? If both are stepping on other people So I think there's a similarity there in the Nafgamina. That blood kills. That there's the blood kills people. And the Arav kills people. But the difference is we're talking about two different middos. One is I can kill a person with my confidence. And the other is I can kill a person with my ambition. The fact that I'm sometimes capable of doing something means, for example, just because you're capable of doing something, let's call that midodam. Doesn't mean that it's not good to allow another person to do it, right? Let's say for example, in a company, you'll have people that are very capable, so very often what they do is, well, I'm the most capable person of doing it, so nobody else should do it, and sometimes it's better for a job to get handled by somebody who's not necessarily as capable, right. Having confidence, healthy confidence, means I'm going to take on a different role in this company. That's why sometimes people that are very good workers don't make very good managers because all they do is they say, 'Fine, I'll do it,' and then the people working under them don't actually get to do anything. Ambition is not like that at all.

24:48 Ambition is, I'm never going to allow you to do it because I have to be better than everybody. Do you hear the difference? One is I'm the best person for the job. That's unhealthy, right? And the other is my job here is to dominate another. Both have negative consequences. This is a really good one to unpack for a little bit longer. This Dever, right? What was Dever? Animals dying. There was a pestilence. It's called And this is the midah of Tiferes, which is the midah of compassion. Um, And let's first do the difference between love and compassion, and then we'll talk about what healthy compassion looks like and unhealthy compassion. Love very often means that I've overlooked somebody's flaws. So when a person is dating a girl So they love the girl. So they don't see things that are obvious. The their flaws aren't even part of the equation. Brush off the red flags. It's like I don't even see the red flags. There are no red flags. She's amazing. If you ask somebody what are the red flags, they go, I don't know. We complement each other perfectly. It's like you're deeply in love, brother. That's great, and that's beautiful. Compassion is a little bit different, and frankly, it's a little bit more enduring.

26:08 Because when a person is in love When the red flag comes up, they go, "Oh, I'm out," because now I'm not in love anymore. But when a person has compassion for another They see the flaw. But they can find compassion for that flaw. Because they say you're great, regardless of these flaws, despite these flaws, I think you're an amazing person. And also, when I see you, I understand I'm flawed, you're flawed. Hey, we're all flawed together. And so, it's okay that you're in pain and going through whatever you're going through. I'm also going through my things, and I can be empathetic. And by doing that, by being a deeply compassionate person. So you're really in service of that person. Because when you have compassion for somebody, that's a way of joining them on their journey. That's an amazing thing to have. If you think about it, somebody is going through something, and you just are the guy next to them, putting your arm around their shoulder, going, "Okay" I got you. We're okay. This isn't you. This isn't the only version of you. This is one way that your life is manifesting right now. I've also got that stuff. Let's walk together.

27:22 But there is a very, very dangerous Egyptian type of compassion And basically, what this compassion does is it is exploitative. I'll be compassionate to you in order to get what I want from you. So it appears that I'm compassionate. But really, I'm just compassionate to you because I'm using you on some level. And so it's very sly. So it's like one example of this would be Let's say a person is wealthy. And then somebody said, "I'm going to be there for them in their time of need, and I'll be a voice of compassion in their life" And then I'll have wiggled my way into their life, so now I can get from them what I want. When we're doing business together like that. So you have to be, and you have to really know yourself to know what type of compassion you're offering. In Mitzrayim, because Mitzrayim was all about domination, the culture was not. It appeared like on the outside, it was a culture of compassion.

28:29 But really, it's not a culture of compassion at all. It's a culture of a certain devious type of compassion that is designed to exploit another person, and that's why the makah of dever where you have this disease that's killing off all of the cattle. It's because if you think about it, that's really what happens with fake compassion. Fake compassion is a silent killer. It appears like I don't understand why this relationship isn't working. Look how compassionate I am. You're so compassionate. Why do I feel so used? It's because that compassion, in its essence, was about using another person. There's a type of compassion that's deeply unhealthy. So again, so far what you've seen is we've gone from just following malchus. We spoke about inappropriate confidence. Yisod. We spoke about inappropriate intimacy, Egyptian intimacy. Hoed. We spoke about what you submit to: submitting something higher than yourself or submitting something lower than yourself. Netzach. We spoke about the devouring capacity of ambition. And now we spoke about the destructive nature of exploitative compassion.

29:47 What's the positive side of compassion? Of course, the positive side would be that I'm genuinely interested in walking alongside of you, and this is a real relationship. It's not exploitative; it's connective. You said something about serving earlier. Meaning I'm in service of you. You're in need of compassion right now, and you're my brother, so why would I not help you? It's the Rebbe that seeks nothing from you other than to be a journey. Along the way, he's a person who's a witness to your journey, as opposed to the rabbi who's like, and one day these talmidim will become in the army of my, whatever that wherever I go, they'll line up to say like, look who's coming to town. Rabbi Kalish has a hundred people who come to the airport to greet him because he's not looking for anything from them.

30:33 That's the difference. There are some people that are like, I'm going to be the best rabbi, so when I show up to the airport, there's going to be a hundred talmidim to greet me. And of course, the opposite of that is the exploited of compassion that we've been speaking about. We're running out of time, so I need to move a little bit faster. But I think every one of these things really could be a sheir unto themselves. We're already holding now by gevura. Now this where, even though we need to go a little bit faster, we need to go a little bit slower because this shchin. This the makah of boils, which is gevura The strength. In this case, it means the strength of rejection. Right? Fire, right? That like that boil, it's fire, right? Fire. The capacity of fire is that it's always moving upwards. Fire moves upwards and it surges away from people. And that's basically what gvura is. It's a sense of rejection. In a healthy world, I travel upwards. I move away. I move out of this category. I use that fire that I have inside of me to reject inappropriate things.

31:46 And that's a healthy form of rejection. You have to learn how to be able to say no in your life to unhealthy things. That's I know it sounds like a simple thing, but it's not a simple thing at all to be able to say no. I'm using that midah of fire to reject those things. Unfortunately, the capacity to reject that the use of that fire to reject the Egyptian fire is I use my capacity to reject in a cruel fashion So it's like let's say if you're dating someone and you need to break up with them. You could break up with them kindly. You could say no to somebody and that's healthy and appropriate. Or you could say no to somebody. With a sense of cruelty, like a bad breakup, right? It's not just about me leaving this relationship, but it's about me putting you down. There is a hatred, a fire that I take out on you, right? And like boils, right? Or there is like an infectious disease there, right? When a person rejects others in a cruel fashion. Sometimes that happens. By the way, a person thinks that they're rejecting another in this from. I'm very from.

33:01 I'm rejecting that person. If you're rejecting something in your life, remember you're not rejecting them. That's not about them. It's more about me. I'm moving away from something that I feel is unhealthy. The litmus test is how you do it. Right? Because when you reject someone with cruelty Two people get hurt: the person you rejected, and yourself. Because now you're a cruel person So there are times where we have to say no to unhealthy relationships. There are times where we have to say no to unhealthy things in our lives. I'm not putting that in my mouth. I'm not touching that thing, whatever it is. Those are healthy no's. But when we reject in a cruel fashion, we become cruel people, and obviously we hurt the people around us. So if you reject in a non-cruel fashion, you'll feel good about yourself. You might feel sad that somebody else is not feeling positive today, but I'll feel a great sense of dignity that I said no to a relationship that was no longer healthy for me, and I'll still dive in for that person. I'll be happy for that person. It perhaps is no longer a relationship that I can participate in, but I don't necessarily want that person to be feeling bad. We know that to reject somebody hurts, but it's not about rejecting them.

34:24 It's more about myself. If you feel self confidence, that's unhealthy. If you feel a sense of like, today's a great day. I extricated myself. But Lamaisa, there's another person on the other end of that. That ain't easy, right? Now here's where it gets really, really. Now we're ready. We're at the highest level of the emotional midos. Because now we're at Chesed. Chesed is borrowed. And Barad, you guys have heard this from me a million times before. Barad is hail, right? This is going to be selfish love. Selfish love, right? Remember we spoke about fire as rejection, right? Fire ascending upwards, right? Leaving something, right? Water is exactly the opposite. Remember, water goes from as remember from Tanya, I'm sure Hekma remembers, water goes from a higher place. To a lower place. Water always has a sense of humility. There's love. I'm giving over from myself to another, and that's what healthy love is. Healthy love nourishes another person by bringing yourself from a higher place into a lower place. Of course, the Egyptian notion of love is exactly the opposite. Instead of going from a higher place to a lower place, like water in a nourishing way.

35:41 Here it comes down in a frozen way. Like that's what hell is. It's frozen water, and it hurts others. There's a love that hurts others instead of actually nurturing them. And what that fundamentally looks like, just in a practical sense, is that I could share myself with another. That's a beautiful gift, or I could use love to nourish myself. That's the unhealthy version of love. The unhealthy version of love is there's a certain ego to the love that I have. It's not about you. It's about me. And perhaps that's why we could explain that the unique nature of the Barad in Mitzrayim was that it was both fire. And ice together, because it had the rejection quality of that fire, and it has the frozen water capacity of the love. So if you put it together, it's basically ego. Ego meaning the love is really inwards. That's that fire. It's that inward love, and because it's that inward love, how does it impact on another?

37:01 So it hurts some. It's like you're giving, but you're really taking. So you could be in a relationship, and this is very often what happens, where the wife will say to the husband "You're hurting me," and the husband will say, "What are you talking about?" This is me loving you And the husband might not know that his love is really selfish and inwardly focused, and she just happens to be the object of his love. How's that different than the unhealthy compassion? So in the unhealthy compassion, I think the way we described it was exploitative. This is not exploitative in the same way. I love myself. You just happen to be look how good a husband I am. I can't be a good husband without a wife. Look how good a husband I am. Here you positive intentions. The other one you don't. Exactly. But even if you think your intent, it doesn't matter really what the intention is, right? Because this guy really does think he has positive intention, but he has to know that his love is an arrogant love.

38:00 It's not really love of another. It just appears to be love of another. Are we going higher up and each one is either better or worse depending on how from machus to chesed. It's either better or worse. In other words, there's the Jewish concept of this, and there's the right, and there's the Jewish shan is better And then the Egyptian shan is worse. But if you've been following, if you go, if you follow this what we just did now because we just finished all Zion midos. So an amazing thing. It's in a healthy person. I have the confidence to show up to life, knowing that I have a mission. I'm here to unify the world, not to live in a fragmented way. I want healthy intimacy. I submit to higher things than myself. I'm ambitious about that mission. I have compassion for people that are struggling because I see everybody as one united front. I reject that which is unhealthy, and I love that which is amazing.

38:55 And the Egyptian child is exactly the opposite. It's just the same thing over and over again. But it's that same fragmented personality whose confidence is destructive, who doesn't seek true intimacy. There's a creos to his intimacy. That's the frog who submits himself to lower things. Who's ambitious and runs people over in his life. Only has exploitative compassion designed to use other people. Rejects people, not saying no to unhealthy things, but rejecting in order to make himself Higher and better, so to speak. And the love that he has is egotistical. So the selfish kind of love is Could you say it's like loving for the sake of love and not for the sake of the person that you're loving? It is the way I heard it from Manas Friedman, even though I don't know a better way of articulating this. He says 'I love you' is a terrible statement because the first word is 'I,' the second word is 'love,' and the last word is 'you.'

39:52 Really, it should be 'you love I.' Of course, that would make no sense because then you would be saying 'you love me,' so it doesn't really work out grammatically. But in truth, it's not about you at all. So in healthy love, it's total giving to the other person. It's not egotistical. Now we just got through the Zion Midos. You see how each one of the Makos is designed to destroy an element of Egyptian society. Now we get into the world of Bina. Remember, Bina is Hamaven Daver Mitoch Daver to understand one thing from another. You guys should remember that from last year. This is the first now of the intellectual faculties of the soul. This Arbe. This locusts. And this basically the destruction of intelligence. And when a person has deep intelligence, what they have in their life is the ability to cultivate, right? That's the ability to grow beautiful things in their lives, right? When a person is actually an intelligent person and they live intelligently, people can build things, right? There's a sense of growth that comes. I don't mean IQ here. I mean when a person is intelligent, right? When you live an intelligent life, of course, the opposite of that, the Egyptian version of this Is that which is destructive. Destructive, it leaves nothing growing. Is locusts? That's the ability to corrupt your intelligence, and that basically happens with rationalizations.

41:26 And so that's the way that most of us live. I think most of us are telling ourselves, rationalize. We live with this. With the sense of, what do you mean? I'm right. But there's such a corruption of intelligence that they don't even realize that the thing they think is only because they have an agenda. They don't realize that agenda in and of itself is coming from a deep place of bias. We all have our things that are the immovable objects of our lives. Like, what do you mean? This is obvious. It's not obvious to everybody. It's obvious to you. You put that at the center of your life, and therefore you're making these rationalized thoughts, these rationalized decisions from that. But of course, that initial thing should never have been there. So it's like In order for me, I remember once in Yeshiva, great guy actually. He was struggling with attending a certain aspect of Seder. He said because he needs to get a two and a half hour workout every single day.

42:25 So in order for me to get two and a half hour workout, I can't go to Seder. And when I said to him, do you really need a two and a half hour workout? He's like, of course I do, and he could not bring himself around to understanding that he did not need a two and a half hour workout. It took me a very long time to help him understand. In your life, do you think you're going to get two and a half hours to work out every single day? No. So it's not the immovable object of your life that you think it is. But when you establish, no, this is me, then you'll tell yourself a million different rationalizations in order to get there. At this point You still have Emotion. Now we have to move a little bit faster. I'm so sorry, just because we're not going to be able to make it. Yes or no? Let me just keep going. This is a good example of healthy gevura. I wish I could say yes, but I can't because we're already running late. Now there's Chosech.

43:17 Now remember, the whole point of this year was to get to what? Was to understand why after Chosech something changed and Moshe is no longer welcome in the house of Paro. Everything we did was just to build up until right now. Ready for it? Choshech is the destruction, not of your bina, but of your chachma. What is chachma? Chachma is the humility to be able to say something that I don't know, which actually gives space for you to know it. Anytime your mind is full, you can't learn something new. When you learn what chachma really is, the ability to learn new things. That's why children are great at learning because they have a natural humility that there's so much they don't know. That's why it's so hard to teach teenagers, because they know everything. But what's the first humility to understand that you don't know everything?

44:07 Once I understand that I don't know everything, I now have the possibility of learning something. Of course, what's the negative side? What's the negative side of chachma? The negative side of chachma is I know everything. I now live in a state of choshech. My mind is closed. There's no penetrating my mind. There's no capacity for me to learn something new. Here's what influences people to go off the dere because they think they know everything about everything. That's true. That's a good one. So there's a sense of arrogance that comes with chachma. So now here's what's critical. Up until this point You still have a Moshe Rabbeinu in your life. But look what happens when your mind gets locked. Right now you have no ability to assume. You have no ability to bring new information inside of yourself. Right? And now as a result of that There's no hope.

45:06 Because there's no capacity for you to listen to truth Because truth, by its definition, can only be heard by somebody who's submitted to the possibility that there's something he doesn't know. So up until this point, in theory, Paro could still go free because the Moshe Rabbeinu, that voice inside of our person, is still screaming that truth. Don't do this. But when you reach the point that your mind is closed, and I have no capacity to listen anymore, so now what becomes your relationship with your Moshe Rabbeinu? What becomes your relationship with your consciousness? With your conscience, Moshe Rabbeinu, Moshe can't teach you because you're no longer a learner. So there's an amazing tirah here. Moshe Rabbeinu for the first nine makos is welcome in the house of Paro. There's a respect. There's a respect that he has that Paro has for Moshe Rabbeinu And Moshe Rabbeinu is welcome. And he says we're leaving. This is not good. These makos are coming.

46:07 But Paro doesn't want to get rid of Moshe Rabbeinu. But now that his mind is locked, now that he's in a state of choshech, there's no reason for Moshe Rabbeinu to be there anymore. And Adaraba, Moshe Rabbeinu is no longer of service to me. He's miserable. He makes my life miserable. I don't want him here anymore. So what does Paro say to Moshe Rabenu now? We're done. Get out. We will never see each other again. And if I see you, you're gonna die. Meaning, any time you come up inside of me, what my responsibility is now, is to kill you. I'm not interested in having you as a part of my life anymore. To this Moshe Rabenu responds and says, "You have no idea how right you are" Because. The fact that you are willing to expel me from your house will be the death of you.

46:55 It will be the death of you. Which brings us now to the final makah. What's makas bechoros? Makas bechoros is not chach, is not bina or chacham. It's called keser. Keser is the wisdom of what's called the supra conscious. It's your identity. It's the thing that comes before your intelligence because you are not your thoughts. Once you get to a stage where you're willing to kill Moshe Rabbeinu, you're no longer willing to learn. The addict is no longer willing to even entertain the possibility of going to Reh. So now, what happens is that first-born instinct—that's your most primal drive, that's the core you that is you. You have the ability to kill that. You have the ability to kill your b'chor. It's the hardest thing in the world to do, because that's your core identity, which generally we say is something that cannot be destroyed, right? But when a person lives a life of such addiction, such abuse, it gets to the point where their identity is absolutely obliterated.

47:56 And on this, I'm sorry, I can't take any more questions. Just because the guys are already waiting for the next year, but I want to make sure you guys get to this. And in this point, when a person hits that rock bottom, where their identity is so absolutely destroyed, what happens? Moshe Rabbeinu slaps Paro in the face. And this is an unbelievable thing. There's two ways of understanding this. The Gemara and Zvachim says that when you slap somebody in the face, it's the equivalent of slapping Hashem in the face. Because when you slap a person, really, what is that person? That person is a godly being. So the Alter Rebbe says when Moshe Rabbeinu slapped Paro in the face, he said, 'You have no more godly identity. The fact that you are willing to kick me out of your palace.' Means there's no godliness left, and he whacked Paro in the face.

48:45 And he says, "Now your identity is going to be obliterated." But here's the catch. Here's the beautiful catch at the end. When you hit rock bottom and your identity is completely obliterated, and you've reached that fiftieth level of Tuma, that fiftieth level of Paro, what happens? The shell now breaks open, and what occurs? A person could do tshuva. So there's a catch twenty-two at the very end when Moshe Rabbeinu slaps Paro in the face and says there's no godliness here. What happens to Paro? He goes through Makas Bechoros. And now what happens at Kriyas Yamsof? What does the pasuk say? Nobody was left. Says the Dasakenim. Here the ad is ad velo ad bechlal. Every single Egyptian was killed except for who? Paro, except for Paro. And ultimately we know for those of you who went to Steiner to Sheer on Yom Kippur night, where does Paro then turn up again? In Ninve.

49:49 And when Yona didn't want to go to Ninve to say to Ninve do tshuva, it's because he knew that who was the king of Ninve? Paro was the king of Ninve. And when Yona does eventually come to Ninve and say do tshuva, Paro is the one that says chevr, let's do tshuva. Why? Because Paro himself, the slap of Moshe Rabbeinu impacted him. When Paro got that frask right across the face, that said, "There's no godliness left in you." There's a destruction, a complete obliteration of your identity. What happens even to the lowest person in the entire world? When that last vestige of Paro breaks and every Egyptian is killed, what do you see in that moment, Rabosei? Then you see the true Eloku comes out, and even Paro could do tshuva. It's a tremendous lesson for us.

50:33 It's a tremendous lesson for us because we see in our lives, probably as we were going through this. I even noticed about myself. I have every one of these ten makos. I have every one of these ten Egyptian qualities. And probably we also noticed about ourselves that we have every one of these ten positive Jewish qualities. But as we fall into these things, a person should not chas v'shalom lose hope. That voice of Moshe Rabbeinu that we have inside of us has to constantly be yearning and constantly be pushing us to do better and better. By Hashem, we won't need to reach that last level of parah where we completely fall apart. But even in the places where we do fall apart and we do push the Moshe Rabbeinu out of our lives, you should know that Moshe Rabbeinu—you think you're going to kill your conscience before that conscience leaves you—it's going to give you a good slap in the face, and hopefully that slap in the face is going to be a slap in the face that says, 'Really? There's no godliness. There's any part of your life, even the lowest dimensions, even the lowest parts, have godliness to them.' And we need to unpack that godliness to discover it in order, by Hashem, to do a complete shulah.