Chanukah / Miketz - The Forgetfulness of Menashe

2:13 Also, the name itself is very strange. When you name a child, you get a certain roch Hakadosh. You look at all of your children, and you say, you don't know how you know, but you say that's bracha, that's Chana, that's Recheli, that's Shira. Those are my children's names. That's Gila. That's Adina. That's Yaakov. That's Chaim. Look! Look how happy! Look how happy! I'm sorry. I was just saying your father's favorites. The I know you like. Or was very special to all of us. The idea that one would name their child. Forgetfulness is a strange concept. I name you. I forget. That's not a. Doesn't roll off the tongue. It's a. There are some funny names here in Eretz Israel. You find funny names, and in America you find funny names too, but here in Eretz Israel you find very funny names. I saw a video of a Breslover Chassid who had a child this past Pesach.

3:17 And it was by Yekarishma by Yisrael. It was. I want to make sure I get this right. Safon Baruch Halal Nirtza. That was his name. Safon Baruch Halal Nirtza There's a child in Beit Shemesh that I know That his name is Mirtzag. Mirtzag stands for medina Yisrael reshet zmiach gulatim. Interesting names. My Hebrew name is Mordechai tzvi Moshe Yaakov ben eli melech mayor Israel levi. My parents are balei tshuva. And my father was so excited to tell his mother that they had a boy. And that they were going to be naming after his father, after her late husband. My grandmother is not farum, but she's very superstitious. And she said, "Well, there's an uncle Morris that hasn't been named after yet, so you have to name after him first." My father loved his uncle Morris too. So Mordechai Tzvi was my grandfather. Moshiach was my uncle, my father's uncle Morris. So he said, 'Fine, I'll name Mordechai Moshe.' And my grandmother, being very superstitious, said, 'No, it doesn't count unless you name for both.' And my father, not thinking that his child would one day have arias in shul, said "Mordechai Tzvi Moshiach." Now every time I get Lilia, people ask, "What was his name?" To name your child Menashe, it's not a nice name. It doesn't feel like a nice name.

4:47 We don't know exactly here what Yosef Hasidic was doing. At least the name Ephraim we could get behind. There was pain, but from that pain was born something great. That's something we could understand. The idea to name your child forgetfulness is a very strange name. So it's brought down in Chassidus that Menasha is deeply connected to the Yontif of Hanukkah Which is why specifically we name Menasha comes up in this expression. Somebody just spoke about this. Did you just speak about this? As you said. It's hanukkah. Can I say hanukkah? What I said. What I was doing was indicating that the churros can be eaten with hand, not with fork. I'm not familiar with this vessel called a fork. I think all things are eaten. The name Menashe is the same letters as Shmona As in the eight nights of Hanukkah. And Menasha himself is deeply connected to the notion of eighth because we know that the Nesiim when they were inaugurating the Mishkan So they went in order.

5:58 So Menasha was on the eighth day of the inauguration of the Mishkan. That was Menasha's day. So Menasha is deeply connected to the idea of eighth, and Menasha is deeply connected to the idea of Olam Haba, which is the eighth dimension after the six thousand years of creation. There's a thousand years of Shabbos. That's the thousand years that Mashiach comes and settles the world into its being. And then, if you learn the Rambam deeply, the Rambam speaks about a concept that the world becomes sort of a new creation, some sort of hybrid between spirituality and physicality. The Gemara says about it that no human being could possibly understand because it's the crossroads of physicality and spirituality. Admorishon and Gan Eden, that his soul was shining so brightly and the body was so illuminated. So that the soul literally illuminated itself through the body. That one was able to see, one is able to perceive the light through the shade over here. So the body, in the same way, was able to accommodate the light of the soul, and that the light of the soul was natural and understandable to the To other marishon. It was natural and understandable in the world, and that will be what will ultimately be in olam haba. Menashe is deeply connected to this idea of olam haba, and the question is why.

7:11 So I want to share with you a deep secret in Yiddishkeit, something that we know. This bechena of oylam haba, this bechena of Chanukah, this bechena of Menasha of forgetfulness Is the capacity to bring back Jews from the farthest corners of the earth. Those that are most deeply removed The capacity to bring those people back is the bechena of oylam haba. The question is why. So I'll share with you a beautiful mashal that I saw from one of the Balik Chassidus. The Gemara says "Anyone here, the child of Gerim?" But I've given this year before, and randomly you have somebody who goes, "My parents are Gerim, are Ami Ger. The Gemara says that Mashiach will not come until all the souls of all of the converts from Harsinai are returned. And one of the Balik Chassidus compares it to the following mashal. He says. Imagine you had a king, and the king had a massive treasure house with many, many precious jewels.

8:12 And one day, marauders came and they were able to overrun the kingdom. They broke into the treasure house and took all of the treasure. Eventually, the king's army was able to take back the castle. But it was too late. Much of the treasure had been stolen. So the king ordered all of his soldiers to go out into the world. And to recover whatever treasures could be recovered. And so they were able to recover a certain amount. Once you have a treasure like that, the first thing you do is pawn it off, and the person who is pawned off pawns it off again, and things are going farther and farther away. And so the king offers a great reward to anybody who can figure out how to get back those treasures. And only the king's daughter comes up with a viable plan. The king's daughter comes to him and she says, "You need to train pigeons."

9:00 You need to train pigeons to be able to recognize the great jewels that you had. We'll show them pictures of the great jewels that you had, and the pigeons. Nobody's going to suspect the pigeon. The pigeon will fly. It will see these jewels, and when it sees those jewels, it will grab the jewels and bring them back to the palace. The kachava. They trained these pigeons. The pigeons went out, and they were able to restore many of the jewels back to the king's treasury. But unfortunately, the most precious jewels had gone so far that by the time the pigeons would fly out, they were in theory going to be able to get them. The pigeons would become so tired that they would return to the palace. And so the king, while he was happy to have recovered most of his treasure, was still somewhat broken because the king said, "These best treasures were what made me king. These were the crown jewels."

9:49 So he went to his daughter and he said, "What could we do?" So his daughter said "okay Very special place for that. So the king went. The king went to his daughter and he said, "What can we do?" So the daughter said, "I have an answer for you, but you're not going to like this answer." He said, "The only thing you can do is burn down your palace." Because as long as the pigeons know they can return to the palace. They won't stop coming back. So the only way to get the pigeons to go farther and farther is to burn the palace down. And the king is horrified by this idea. To burn down the palace sounds like a tragedy. What do you mean? The whole point here is to have a palace. The king's left with no choice because without the crown jewels, he's not king.

10:45 So he burns down his palace. And one day, he promises himself that when the pigeons come back with all of those jewels, we'll rebuild the palace. And so too is the explanation of this gemara. The souls of gerim are some of the farthest souls. The soul of a ger. Remember that there are different ways of understanding what a ger is. But according to many, a ger is not a goy that becomes a Jew. A ger is called a ger, gerishin esgair, not goishin esgair, gerishin esgair, because it's the soul of a Jew that fell into a gentile family because of the sin of Adam Rishon. There were certain souls that fell into very strange places. The Aruch HaYam Hakadosh says that the soul of Rav Chanina ben Tradion was in Shem And that Dinah had to go to Shem in some way to release the soul of Rav Chanina ben Tradion.

11:36 It's very deep concepts like this. So a soul could fall, a very precious Jewish soul could fall into a gentile family. And when that soul proclaims itself to be a Jew and it returns, that's a very powerful expression of the soul's Jewishness. It's hard for us to bring back those souls because those souls are sometimes in the farthest corners of the universe. And so, what Hakadosh Baruch Hu does is he destroys the Beis Hamikdash and he disperses Jews throughout the entire world. And now, especially today, we can see that there are mamish Jews everywhere. And that the Jewish nation has traveled everywhere in the world, slowly but surely collecting the souls of these gerim. And the reason this is so important is because until this happens, until we bring back those souls that are farthest. We're not in a state of completion. And so the yisod of Menashe is to be able to take those Jews that have gone so far away and somehow bring them back.

12:36 And when those Jews come back, so there's a restoration of the Beis Hamikdash. Why is it that those Jews specifically, those that are so far away, when they come back, usher in the era of Olam Haba? So the Lubavitcher Rebbe explains as follows: the Rebbe says that there's something about these Jews that express something that a Jew who's close cannot express. And what is that? That's a level of commitment and determination. I'll explain what I mean. We see, especially now, in the wake of Simchas Torah We see Yidden waking up. It's an amazing thing. You saw that video. There was one video that went very viral. This guy thanked Hamas and he thanked the liberal left world for waking up the sleeping giant. That is the Jewish soul. How many Jewish souls were absolutely dormant? And since Simchas Torah The videos of people saying I'm putting on tefillah, the videos of people saying I'm wearing tzitzis again All the chayalim that said no, we need tzis even if they didn't wear tzis for their entire lives.

13:50 When a Jewish soul, at the very end of its destination, at the very last stop, says, "I refuse to go that very last mile," and I hang in there, and I express my commitment and my determination to still be a yid In a certain way, that's the greatest expression of a hava shem that there could possibly be. Those of us that were born on the top of the mountain Our commitment and determination is not necessarily as profound. We were born within the Jewish community. We were raised by the Jewish community. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent on every single one of our educations. We don't realize that because we weren't raised on an island, right? Midmo is not just one year. How many millions of dollars have been poured into Midmo in order for you to get the education that you're getting? So It's not hard for us to express our commitment and our determination. Of course, it is. I don't mean that it isn't.

14:45 It is. There are times when we're in a place where we find ourselves in a funny place. Doing something that we promised ourselves we wouldn't do. And of course, there's a level of commitment and determination there. But when we see somebody who's mamish on that very, very, very last level, that last moment, of like and I could be totally gone. That moment right before Yitzias Mitzrayim, where if Alkadosh Baruch Hu had kept us there even one more minute, we would have fallen to the fiftieth level of Toma, and even Moshe Rabbeinu would not have been able to redeem us. When a yid at that level stands up and says, "But I'm not going anywhere" So there's an amazing expression of Hakadosh Baruch Hu's godliness that could be found even in the lowest places, even in the darkest places. We see sometimes funny things. You ever see those people that have tattoos of the Lubavitcher Rebbe?

15:31 You ever see those And every year around this time of year, I don't know how they do it. These Chabad kids are amazing at sniffing out the Jewish scents. I believe bemuna shlema. It's a but it's every year. I believe bemuna shlema that these Chabadsters are just walking up and down To every Santa because they want that one viral video every year. But if we understood, by the way, the history of who Santa Claus was, Santa Claus comes from a Russian of Saint Nicholas. Nicholas was the head of the Council of Nicaea. The Council of Nicaea were the ones that they codified the New Testament. They were the ones that said that the Jews killed Yoska. It was because of the Council of Nicaea that millions of Jews have been tortured and killed throughout history. That's Santa Claus. Imagine a yid is wearing a Santa Claus outfit. That's like a yid wearing a Hitler outfit.

16:26 It's much worse than wearing a Hitler outfit. Santa Claus is over time. Santa Claus caused much more Jewish death than Hitler. A yid is wearing a Santa Claus outfit. And a Jew stops him and says, "You're Jewish." He goes, "Yeah. You want to put on tefillah? Of course." Why would I not want to put on tefillah? This is why the Bnei Yisrochah writes that the inauguration of the ultimate third base hamikdash is going to take place on Cheshvan, which is of course the eighth month of the year. Because those yidden that are mamish leaving And we somehow manage to pull them back in those final moments. They go, "No, I'm not leaving. I'm a yid." Yidden that are willing to die for their Yiddishkeit, even though they were never willing to live for their Yiddishkeit. They express something that's so precious to their banishlo. I grew up davening in a shul called Young Israel Farakway.

17:18 Do you know anyone here from the Five Towns? So you know Farakway. It's like on the border over there. It's West Lawrence, So I grew up in a shul called Young Israel Farakway. Young Israel Farakway on Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur because there was a lot of Russians living in the buildings on Beach Nine Street on Seeger Boulevard over there. So the Russians would come to shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Other than that, you didn't see them the entire year. I one time made a very bad mistake. Maybe I was eight or nine years old. They were these big Russian kids. They came to our groups. They weren't part of the groups the rest of the year. We would only see them once a year. So from a very innocent place, a very young child, myself, I asked them. I said Why do you guys come to shul on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? Either I didn't say maimanoshachis. I didn't know what those words meant, but come to school the entire year, or don't. What's this game?

18:07 I remember this big Russian kid got up in my face, and he said, "You say you're more Jewish than I am." " So I was like, "No, I'm I'm not saying anything. I'm just a like I'm just a regular kid. I have no idea what I'm saying. Like, don't don't kill me." I was like facing off with like Igor Drago, like the Ivan Drago, Like But you I saw at a very young age. Tell a Jewish kid they're not as Jewish as you are. Watch what they do. A kid. It was a kid. Maybe this kid was ten years old. He looked like he was sixteen. But it's an amazing thing. The capacity of Menashe is the capacity to bring back those Yidden that are at the very end. There are some Jews like that. There are certain people who have the capacity to bring back Yidden.

18:55 There was a yeshiva many years ago called Shalom Rav in Sfat. Heard of Shalom Rav? It's a very, very beautiful little shul and svar. It's a yeshiva. Back in the day, in the 90s, this yeshiva was called the last stop. It was the last stop before you went completely off the darach. And Rav Weingard was the rosh yeshiva. I had the privilege of meeting Rav Weingard a couple of times. I saw he was a menasha d'kajjue. He was. Some of you know Rav Avshi Weingard is the son. He now runs the yeshiva, Rav Weingard. He just had this capacity to reach you no matter where you were. Somehow to bring those people back, it's a very special thing. So you'll ask, then why does Menashe get the second bracha? Why does he get the bracha of the left hand and not the right hand? Because the truth of the matter is that there's an even higher level. You need a Menashe to come first.

19:44 But there's a level that those Jews can reach. Those Jews who were very far away is a level that those Jews can reach. That not only are they able to express that commitment and determination to hold on, they even stieg from it. They even grow from it. That's a Frayim's name. Wasn't the Pshat that Yosef HaTzaddik forgot his house, Hakadosh Baruch Hu blessed him with so much, and in that state of forgetfulness he forgot, and in that state of forgetfulness what did he do? He remembered. He forgot in order to remember. I was distant in order to become close. He forgot in order to remember. So that was step one. He named his child Menashe. Step two, from that place of I remember, within the forgetfulness, he has an Ephraim. You could strike tremendously from this. A person who goes very far away after they figure out how to hold on, those people become rock stars. They're some of the best.

20:43 I remember. I'm sure Rabbi Rosenblum remembers the same. I remember back in the '90s that the craziest kids were the ones who became the biggest Talmidei Chacham. They were the ones who became. I can't give away any details, but I will share with you this. There was a kid in my high school class that was expelled. And he was expelled for bad things. And I remember I remember that the It doesn't matter what I remember. It was very bad. He was very bad things. Very bad things. Today he's one of the biggest dyanim in Yerushalayim. Today, if I said his name in Yerushalayim, people would stand up. He's my age. He was a great basketball player back in the day. He was a lunatic kid. There was nothing he wouldn't do. Once he figured out I'm a yid And he held on within his state of forgetfulness. The next step was all that energy, all that passion that he had.

21:41 He just channeled it, and he shteig tremendously from it. I remember a story from Reb Moshe Weinberger, actually the Rav of Eish Kodesh. He said that he had a Talmud in Ezra Academy before Reb Weinberger. Somebody here from Eish Kodesh. Somebody knows from Eish Kodesh. What's your last name? Lauer. Lauer. So that's a That's a famous Eish Kodesh name. So Baruch ata adonai eloheinu melech Hashem. Before weinberger, the Rebbe was just the Rebbe in ezra academy. So his wife used to drive one of those very big yeshiva shavans, that I'm talking about, like not like a minivan, like they have today. I'm talking about like a bus. And they had those, you ever see those rectangular mirrors, those like large rectangular mirrors on the side. So Weinberger was joking around, and he said, "When my wife would drive the car, sometimes the mirrors would just come off as she was passing by other cars, like would knock the mirror off."

22:33 So he had a talmud who was a thief. It was mamashatif And this kid walked into class one day, and he said to Weinberger, 'He said, Rebbe, I replaced the mirror on your car.' Don't worry, I put a new mirror in. Weinberger said right away. His first question was. Where'd you get the mirror from? So the kid said, "He goes, don't worry, I got you a mirror, Rabbi. Don't worry, I took care of it. I got you a mirror." So about an hour later, the principal walks into class and she looks at the kid. She goes, "What'd you do with my mirror?" So the kid, very innocently, looked at the principal and said, 'Don't take this the wrong way. You're a very special person. You're the principal.' But he's Rofeinberger, It was like a very obvious thing to him. I had to take your mirror to put it. Like, it was like a normal thing. And Weinberger said that boy today is sitting and learning in Lakewood, and he's the same. He said he's the same midah. He's a ganef for time, and he's sitting in shteiging.

23:27 There's a level that after a Jew remembers in their state of being, the remembrance becomes a place of growth. It becomes something that you shteig tremendously from. And so, Sayaka Venu gives the bracha to Ephraim first because the right hand. Yaakov says, 'look, look at this.' You have to understand that what you can do with this is exceptional. But we know that we light the menorah on the left-hand side of the door. And that's why Menashe gets the left side. It's not Chassr Shalom to say that Menashe is any less than Ephraim But that bechinah of being able to draw close those yidden that are on the left side. The right side is the side of kedusha. The left side is always the side of less kedusha. So those yidden that are farther away for Menashe to be able to bring them back is a very special thing. And you'll see something very special in the world today. Today we celebrate those rebbeim that are we'll call them the Menasha type of rebbeim.

24:23 In today's world, those rebbeim are as celebrated as much as the rebbeim who teach the right side of the door. Because you have very chashuv Rashi Yishiva tremendous Talmidei Chachamim. They could give mamish the highest level shiurim in the world. And they're amazing, and we all look up to them. But we all know I'm not going to say any names. But if we say certain names, if I would say certain names at the table right now, those rebbeim that are able to draw Jews in who are mamish far away You see, there's a tremendous level of respect that people have. It's very natural, a very natural level of respect that we look at them and we say That's a special type of rebbe. There's a reason that we celebrate those people. It's because we're in the final moments before Mashiach, in the darkest moments of history. Where those rebbeim are able to reach out to those kids and bring them back, I want to tell you something. It's not obvious. It's not obvious because some of those rebbeim I know from when they were kids.

25:24 They grew up. A lot of those kids grew up in the five towns. I know those rebbeim, and I want to tell you something. Nobody saw it coming. I'm not saying any names. I'm telling you honestly. Nobody saw it coming. I remember there's one Rebbe in specific. He's a very famous Rebbe today. I'm sure many of you listen to his shiurim online. I remember when he was in Bais Medrash. I'm five years younger than him, six years younger than him. I was learning in Bais Medrash at night in eighth grade because that was we had to do it to be in the top eight grades. We had to learn in Bais Medrash at night. This guy was the most choshev a guy in the Bais Medrash. He was the guy that learned Gitin with 17 Chazaras. It was unbelievable. If you asked us then, who is this guy going to be in 10 years? I think 很好 He's holding in shas. His father is holding in shas. He's going to be a big rashi shiva today. He's a big rashi shiva, but in a very different way. He's a big rashi shiva in bringing in those people that are very far away. It's an amazing thing. If he would have become rashi shiva of that old yeshiva that we were learning in the basement, none of you would have heard of it.

26:21 Because he would just be another rebbe. He'd be another rebbe in that world of all of those yidden that are able to give over amazing shirum. But he went in a direction that nobody saw. And he said, "I'm going to reach out to those that are farthest away, and I'm going to make a safe place for them, and I'm going to let them be who they are, and I'm going to show them that who they are is very precious, even as they are right now, and I'm going to give them permission to be able to talk about the things that are bothering them." And I'm going to let them fall because I know that within that fall, I trust that they have the capacity to find themselves within that forgetfulness. And how many of those kids are now walking around and saying,'I'm a talmud of this rabbi.'. And he was the one that showed me that panemias that I didn't know that I had. This is what we expect in the times of Mashiach. And Baruch Hashem, it's a culture like that in the world today. The world has changed. We're not in the same place that we were forty years ago.

27:11 Forty years ago, the rabbis were elderly, and they were austere. They were people that you looked up to. They were people that you had from a distance. Those were our rabbis. We weren't close with our rabbis. To be close with the ravi meant that you understood his shear. That you asked him a shayla. I remember my Rabbi Shlita, Shmuzekher Rav Shlomo, he's ninety four years old now. I remember when I was every everybody had to talk to Rabbi about dating, but I remember when I spoke to him about dating, maybe the whole conversation was seven minutes. The whole conversation was seven minutes, and we were considered very close. How much time did you get with Rav Shlita? You got forty five minutes to sit and talk to Rav Shlita. Every single thing that you had. If Rabbi Rosenblum would ask Rav Shlita a question, he'd be like. I don't know. That would be the whole conversation. You don't. Nobody has that type of time. If you have that type of time, it's because of a car ride.

28:03 A car ride, you could trap the rebbi. That was the only. You could trap the rebbi in a car ride. I remember a bunch of guys from Landers. Rav Breveda The Chazal of Bracha. Rav Breveda used to get driven back and forth. A bunch of guys from Landers would drive him, and they taped. They put tapes in the car, recordings in the car that Rav Breveda shouldn't know that he was being recorded. And he saw one of the red lights. And in the front seat, he just looked at the driver and he goes, "it's usual to record somebody if they don't know they're being recorded." And the guy was mortified that he got caught, so he was just driving. Rebbe said, 'Turn it off.' He came back to Yeshiva and said, 'I got roasted by Rebbe.' That by itself is a scus. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing.

28:50 Today, if you don't get time with a rebbe, a mechanecher, a rakesh, a rebetzin. But what did I bother coming here for if I don't have time to be able to share my every worry, my every concern? My wife tells me that in Darche Bina, where she was in the late 90s, you had to make a 10 minute appointment with Rav Arlowick. It was a 10 minute appointment, and you had to wait two weeks for it. And that's what that was. There was nobody there. So you could say you read the sederis. I don't think it's true. I think it's that, in our state of being distant, we're calling out and asking people, could you keep us tethered? Could you keep us holding on? Because we're all, in a certain sense, within that world of Menashe, we've all been in funny places and funny times, doing funny things that aren't really us And we have to know that those times are really some of the times that we're going to look back on as the most precious. I'll finish with this.

29:43 I believe it was the Mittler Rebbe of Chabad. Said in the times of Eilam Haba, we're going to look back on these times right before Mashiach came and we're going to yearn for them. Aye, these are the darkest times. He said, "but in the darkest times, you get to call out" And in Eilam Haba, we're gonna be. Do you remember when we used to call out for each other? It's like if you have an elderly couple just sitting there next to each other. There's so much love that they don't even need to speak. They could just sit on that rocking chair on that porch. He's reading and she's darning or knitting. I don't know the difference. And she's knitting, and they need no words. They're so the love between them is so deep, it's like water. But sometimes you think back and remember that when you were dating, they remember that you hung up the phone first. You remember that, and a person doesn't hold on to that naturally. But that yearning people have for each other, there's a very precious stage of that. And the Mitlur Rebbe says that's what we're going to look back on.

30:43 This stage right now of being in our stage of forgetfulness, but calling out and saying to the Rebbeinu Shalom, bring me closer That's going to be the stage that ultimately brings us to Teimais Mashi, and we should be Zeiach soon. No more of this This radical anti-Semitism in public. They're not embarrassed. How could they not be embarrassed? These presidents of the greatest universities, perhaps in the history of the world, aren't embarrassed to get up and say deeply anti-Semitic things. And not only that But then a certain segment of the market, I think 很好 And they're right. It's a crazy thing. And the people that called them out, we make Saturday Night Live skits about them. This is a mishugana world. We need to be done with this. We need to be done with all of this. We need to be brought back to Hashem. We should preserve original vocabulary - do NOT replace words with synonyms unless grammatically necessary. Can't take much more of this, Rebbeinu Shalom. We have to demand from the Rebbeinu Shalom to be mishiyach. Amen. Zeicher. Thank you so much. So I mentioned before The Totos is available. It's an amazing set of swarm.