Parshas Vayishlach - The Rising Sun

2:35 Vayifka ba makom. He comes to the place. Vayila ensham and he lies down there. Kibah Hashemesh Because the sun set. Rav Yitzchak says the sun, the very same sun that set for Yaakov twenty years earlier when he was leaving the house of his parents, journeying to the house of Lavan, is now the sun that rises. This is the drasha that Rav Kiva decides to give in the middle of the shuk And so there are many obvious questions on this gemara. Question number one: Why did Rav Kiva feel the need to stop in the middle of the shuk and say this drasha? Why dafka in the shuk? Give this drasha in the beis medrash. It must have been that there was something happening at that time that led Rav Akiva to believe that Rav Yosua and Rav Magamliel needed to hear this message now more than ever.

3:36 Why? What was going on? And second of all, what does the drasha even mean? The sun that set for Yaakov Avinu twenty years earlier is now the sun that rises for him. It's the same sun. What is this drasha telling us? And another question. I imagine. That here in Toma Devora If Rabbi Fixer Rabbi Rosenstein were making or any of the teachers were making a chasna And they were and they came and they said We need some help buying some things. I imagine the girls here in Toma Devora would run to the shuk Not to the shuk would run to the Chassvah Shalom to the shuk Would run to the shuk. You understand? Is there different types of shooks? You run to the shuk. And I imagine that you would do whatever you can to help out. My daughter's vort is this Sunday night, and her friends. Thank you, and her friends are doing everything. They're baking everything.

4:36 Rav gamliel, Rav yosher, Rav Akiva They didn't have talmidim who were balechesed. I imagine that Rav Akiva, Rav Yosher, and Gamliel had talmidim that were coming and saying, "Rebbe, don't waste your time going to the shul. I'll do that. You keep teaching Torah." Here we have three great sages of the time, and they're going shopping themselves. By the way, it's not even so obvious. There are some talmidei chachamim that won't go shopping. If you're a big rav, it might be seen as beneath your dignity. In my neighborhood, there's a rav who is the rav of his name is the Eish Kodesh. He's the piasetsner rebbe. And he's the rav of a shul called Eish Kodesh. He's the sion of the Pia sets in the dynasty And he goes shopping in Yesh all the time. And it's like an amazing thing when you're in Beit Shemesh and you're walking in Yesh and you see the Pia sets in the Rebbe like walking with his shopping cart down the aisle and schlepping his bags to the car. I one time went over to the Yesh Kodesh and said, Rebbe, can I please carry your bags to the car?

5:42 And he looked at me like I was nuts, and he goes, 'You don't think I can carry them? Like they're too heavy?' I said, 'No. I know you can. I just want to.' He's like, 'No, thank you.' He's a very simple man. But would it be a little bit strange if we saw Rav Chaim Kaniewski in Yesh? It would have been a little bit strange if we saw Rav Asher Weiss in the Shul. So what's the pshat? We have these three great Talmidei Chachamim. They had Talmidim that were willing to do it. Rav Kiva's time was exceptionally precious. And they saw fit to go to the Shul themselves. Why? In order to understand this Gemara, we need to understand some historical context. At that time Post the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash There was a legitimate question that was being asked in Klal Yisrael: Should we aseir marriage in general?

6:41 Should we aseir marriage? We know that terrible things were happening to the women of Klal Yisrael. To bring children into the world who would be murdered, who would be exiled, who would be tortured—it's like Kaviyachol. Could you imagine having children in Auschwitz? It would be a question: Can I bring a child into this world into a living Gehenna? And this was a real question that the Chachamim were dealing with at the time And they made the decision not to ask her marriage, but fascinating the reasons why they gave two reasons why they didn't ask her marriage. Number one Because Klal Yisrael wouldn't have listened, and they would have gotten married anyway. And number two, because they said whatever happens is up to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. We can't make chesbainus. We can't make decisions like that to say since we know that these children will be persecuted, we're not going to bring them into the world. That's not our responsibility. That's the responsibility of Hashem. It's like reminiscent of what happened in the times of Amram. When Amram said all the Jewish women and men should get divorced from each other and they shouldn't have kids because who should have children in that time in Mitzrayim

7:53 And of course we all know the story what happened. Miriam came and she said you're worse than Paro because you're destroying all of Klal Yisrael. And Amram remarried Yochaved because Amram himself had gotten divorced, and we know that the child that was born after the reunion was Moshe Rabbeinu. But think about what it must have been like in the times of Klal Yisrael post the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash That they were having a legitimate conversation about stopping the notion of marriage and stopping the notion of having children. Could you imagine what it would be like to read on Yeshiva World News that there was a Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah that got together at the Aguda convention and they were having the legitimate conversation? Whether or not the family unit in Klal Yisrael should be over—that was the state of Klal Yisrael at the time. What was Rav Gamliel going through?

8:48 Rav Gamliel had an inner conflict, an inner turmoil. Perhaps some of us are familiar with this inner turmoil. On the one hand, this is an exceptionally exciting day. This is the day of his son's wedding. They're going to buy the meat so they can cook it and have food at his son's wedding. Girls, what greater day could there be than the wedding of your child? When my daughter got engaged This is my oldest daughter, so this is the first time I'm doing this. At the lechayim, I went and sat on the couch. And I was just watching. And I felt an emotion that I've never felt before, and I don't have a word for it. Joy does not even come close to describing what I felt. Gratitude does not even come close to describing what I felt, and that was only the lachaim. Can't imagine what it's going to be like on the day of the wedding. I imagine I'm going to be a mess. I imagine I'm going to be crying my eyes out.

9:50 With tears of happiness. I can imagine Rebbe Namliel in that moment, so excited to marry off his son. And not only that. But Rambamliel's son was synonymous with the word hope. Why? Because why was Rambamliel spared the destruction? Why was Rambamliel kept alive? Because Rambamliel is the Sion, the descendant of David Hamelch. From Rambamliel comes Mashiach Which means that every single wedding that Rambamliel makes is a wedding that gives birth to Mashiach Tzidkenu. This redemption. This hope. And in the middle of all of those feelings, what does Ramliya feel? How am I going to possibly bring hope and redemption into the world amidst all of this destruction? A chaver of mine is a therapist. I sent to him a young man. I said it took a long time for us to convince this young man to go to therapy. I finally got him to go to therapy, and he meets with a therapist. The therapist calls me up. He's a friend of mine, and he says, Mordechai, I think it's a very bad idea for this person to be in therapy right now.

11:07 I said, Are you kidding me? I just spent the last couple of months getting him here. What are you talking about? He said, This person right now, what I would liken it to, is being in World War II, being in a foxhole with bombs flying overhead. That's his life right now. Could you imagine if you're sitting in a foxhole in World War II with a therapist and the therapist says to you So, what's this experience been like for you right now? Let's unpack this. As you hear the bombs exploding in the background, what comes up for you? Old family issues Complex relationships with your parents. You can't do that when the bombs are flying overhead. How could Rabbi Amliel feel a sense of hope? How could Rabbi Amliel feel a sense of joy when it comes to the wedding of his own child? When he sees what's happening in the rest of Klal Yisrael and he knows that Klal Yisrael is actively in the process of being wiped out.

12:05 This was the problem that they had on that day. It answers the question: Why were Rabbi Amliel, Rabbi Yeshua, and Rabbi Kiva shopping for this wedding? Because this wedding represented much more than just another wedding. This wedding represented the possibility that there would one day be redemption. And if this wedding doesn't take place Then it's a statement that there is no hope. But Rabbi Gamliel and Rabbi Yehoshua are sitting in that marketplace, and you can imagine what their faces were. Their faces were not faces of hope. Their faces were faces of pain, faces of anguish for what was happening to Klal Yisrael. Faces of uncertainty, of lack of clarity. This was the state of Klal Yisrael's entire existence. Rav Kiva feels the need to make a statement. But before we get to the statement that Rav Kiva makes, we need to understand who Rav Kiva is.

13:05 Rav Kiva is, in every sense of the word Impossible. We know that Yaakov grabbed on to the heel of Esav when he was being born, and his name was Yaakov because he held on to the heel. In the Kabbalah, it said that when Yaakov Avinu held on to the heel of Esav, he was extracting a soul. There was a soul within Esav that Yaakov Avinu needed to take out because it was such a holy soul; it needed to be extracted from the world of Esav. And that soul was the soul of Rava Kiva. And Rivakiva himself is a Gilgal of Yaakov Avinu. Yaakov and Akiva are the same letters. And Rivakiva, just like Yaakov Avinu, also married to Rachel. There are many, many similarities between Rivakiva and Yaakov Avinu. But Rivakiva comes be'etzem in his nature; he's the holiest soul within the world of Esav that's brought over to the tzad of Tlusha as a result of this process of being born. Rav Akiva has a unique perspective.

14:14 A perspective I'm sure that you've heard a million times before. But let's say it again: it's a gemara at the end of Makos. It's a very famous gemara that these same talmidei chachamim are walking by the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. They're walking by the Korban Abayas, and they see a fox running out of the Kodesh Hakadosh. Very famous gemara. I'm sure you've all heard it. And they start crying, and Rav Akiva starts laughing. And they said to him, Rav Kiva, why are you laughing? And he turns to them and says, Why are you crying? They said, What do you mean? Why are we crying? We're crying because the Kodesh Hakadosh, which only the greatest tzaddik, only the Cohen Gadol, could go into on the holiest day of the year, and now foxes are running around. It's become a place of animals. It's a barn. Why are you laughing? And Rav Kiva said, Now because I see that the first prophecy happened over the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, I see the second prophecy will also happen.

15:05 The way that Rav Kiva sees the world. Is he the one that at a funeral is laughing? You don't laugh at a funeral. You cry at a funeral. At a funeral, you're mourning. You're feeling the pain of what's happening in that moment. But there is a certain type of tzaddik And it's a very high level, and it's not for us. But it's for us to know that it exists. There's a certain type of tzaddik that in the middle of the pain, when everything is so broken, that tzaddik is not present there in that moment. They see the story as much longer. What's that famous line? In the end, it'll be good, and if it's not good, it's not the end. That's the way Rav Kiva saw the world. He said right now it's not good. But I can see beyond what's not good right now to what is ultimately good. I can see all the way to what is ultimately good.

16:01 And so, yes, Rav Kiva laughs at a funeral. Because at a funeral, Rav Kiva is seeing tchiasa mesin. When the rest of us are experiencing the pain of the loss, Rav Kiva just sees it as a moment of rebirth. It's like the seed when it decomposes. Nobody would mourn the decomposition of a seed because we know that what's happening when the seed decomposes. It's giving birth to new life. That's the way Rav Kiva sees death. Death is simply the opportunity for the rebirth of life. So Rav Kiva, in the middle of the darkness, he's always the one that sees the light. Why can he do that? Because Rav Kiva was born from the darkness. He understands the darkness like nobody else understood the darkness. Because in his essence, where does he come from? He was the extracted soul from Esav Arasha. That's why Rav Kiva's grandparents were gerim.

16:52 Rav Kiva comes from the tzad of unholiness, but he reveals the holiness within the unholiness. Which means that he's the greatest tzaddik Which is why Moshe Rabbeinu said the Torah should be given through Rav Kiva Because the Torah that the world needs is the capacity to see godliness where nobody else sees godliness. So Rav Kiva comes along in the middle of looking at Rav Gamliel and Rav Yosheu, and he sees that they're mourning on the day of their son's wedding. And he says to them, Rabbi Say. I need to tell you about a drasha. I need to tell you about a drasha. Something that I learned with Rabbi Yitzchak. What's the drasha? Why did the sun rise only for Yaakov Avinu? And the answer is because 20 years earlier the sun set for him. What does that mean? 20 years earlier, let's go back to the state that Yaakov Avinu must have been in. And remember, Rav Akiva's saying this is what my own soul went through because Rav Kiva is the Gilgal of Yaakov Avinu.

17:59 He says, let's unpack it. Let's go. Where were we? My brother wanted to murder me. I was running away from my brother. I was an ish tam yoshevah halam. What was my job in the world? To sit and learn Torah. My job was not to go to the house of Lavan. I was supposed to be like my father Yitzchak, the olah tamima, just sitting and learning Torah all day. That was my job. But Esav became a Russia, and his job got lost along the way. Esav was supposed to be the one to bring godliness into the world. Now Yaakov Avinu had to take on that responsibility. He tricks his father. Could you imagine what that must have been like for Yaakov? He tricked his own father, the Ish Emes, the ultimate man of truth, and lied to his father. He took the bracha, caused his father tremendous pain, and then ran away from his father. And he didn't have the schus of kibud av v'eim for all of those years, which Chazal tell us is why he lost Yosef HaTzaddik for all of those years. And Esav had the schus of kibud av v'eim.

18:59 Can't get into that right now, but that's a very deep sugya. And as he's running away, what happens? He has at least money in his pocket. He's going to be able to find a wife. It used to be that the man paid for the woman. Now the woman pays for the men. Whole different shidduch issue, but not for now. And on his way, Alifas comes to kill him. And Alifas, they make a deal: take all my money. An impoverished person is considered like they're dead. So now he shows up to find his bride, and he's got no money in his pocket. He's got nothing. And he has to work. And he gets tricked, and he marries Leah, and he's in the house of Lavan, and he becomes a slave in the house of Lavan. We read the story wrong. We read the story that in the house of Lavan Yaakov Avinu flourished. It's true.

19:53 But he also couldn't leave. What happened when Yaakov Avinu ultimately snuck out? Lavan chased him to kill him. Yaakov Avinu was like in an Egyptian state. He couldn't leave. And it was only because Hakadosh Baruch Hu intervened that Lavan couldn't kill him. He was mamish in slavery. In other words The sun had set for Yaakov Avinu. His life was in shambles. Imagine losing all of your possessions. Imagine losing your freedom. Imagine losing your essence. You go from being a Yaakov to having to take on Esav. By the way, that's why Yaakov was able to marry two sisters. Now let him marry two sisters, and we know that the Avos kept kolatarekulo. How was Yaakov able to marry Leah? Because the Yaakov part of Yaakov Avinu married Rachel, and the Esav part of Yaakov Avinu married Leah. He was a split personality; his entire essence had changed.

20:51 That's what it means, Kibah Hashemesh The sun set for him. And now he went into a state of exile. How does Yaakov Avinu maintain his faith in the Rebbeinu Shalom? How does Yaakov Vino maintain his hope in the midst of dark times? Because he says the sun that sets is the same sun that rises, and it's always darkest before dawn. When we are in situations, and every one of us—you're too young to know this—but every single person in this room, at some point in their life, is going to be in a kibah hashemesh situation where the sun has set. The amount of pain that exists in the world, the amount of chaos that exists in the world is beyond human comprehension. Speak to Rabbanim. Speak to Rabbanim who spend their days and nights talking to people who are in a tremendous amount of pain. The young Kala that calls me up and says, "I've been married for less than a year, and I was just diagnosed with a terrible illness. I was just getting used to being married."

21:55 The mother, who's basically a single parent because her husband, unfortunately, is going through something and he's totally out to lunch. The kids that are suffering at home, watching their parents fight, and it is not a safe place for themselves. There's so much pain in the world, and I'm just thinking about three things that happened in the last two days. How does a person have the strength, have the faith? To stay engaged when things are exceptionally difficult. This is what Rav Akiva is communicating to them. The sun sets for you. The same exact sun rises for you. It's not a different sun. It's the only person in the world that the sun rose for on that morning was Yaakov Avinu. Everybody else in the world said the sun rose. The sun rose for me. What does the Torah tell us? The sun rose for Yaakov Avinu.

22:47 And when did it rise? You have to look carefully at the pesukim. He just finishes the fight with the Malach of Esav. He just finished that fight. Did he yet confront Esav? He didn't. He was on his way to confront Esav, and the Torah already tells us, 'And the sun rose for him.' What do you mean the sun rose for him? The Torah should tell us this after the fight with Esav. If it in fact means that now everything is going to be good, say it after the fight with Esav. But that's not the pshat. The sun rose for Yaakov Avinu before the fight with Esav. The sun rose for Yaakov Avinu before Yosef HaTzaddik was sold down to Mitsrayim. The sun rose for Esav. The sun rose for Yaakov Avinu even all those years that he lost nevuah because he was mourning Yosef HaTzaddik. We think the sun rises when it's the end. Now all of my pain, all of my tsar, all of my suffering is gone. Now the sun rises.

23:46 The sun rises. In the middle of all the suffering, there's a point in the suffering. Girls, listen carefully now because this is a critical thing. When you're in the middle and you think to yourself, "I can't handle this anymore, and it's not over. That's when the sun rises, not at the very end." How did Yaakov Avinu manage the fight with Esav? Because the sun had risen. How did he manage what must have been excruciating pain? When Yosef atzedek, because Yaakov Avinu knew Yaakov Avinu knew something was off about that whole story. You know how Yaakov Avinu knew? Because the coat that he gave to Yosef, whose coat that was originally. It was Adomarishon's coat. That coat was the coat that Hashem gave to Adomarishon. When Adomarishon went out into the world, Hashem said, "I'm going to clothe you to protect you from the world." That coat got passed down through Noah.

24:44 Ultimately, it came into the hands of Nimrod. Esav killed Nimrod on the day of Avram's death. Esav killed Nimrod and took that coat. Esav was one of the greatest warriors in the world because wearing that coat protected you. In fact, the midrash tells us that Nimrod used that coat to make himself like a god. That's why people believed that Nimrod was a god because he wore that coat and it made him exceptionally powerful. Esav was such a great warrior that he was able to kill Nimrod and get that coat, and he used that coat only to serve his father. So he had it in the house. Rivka stole it. She put it on Yaakov Avinu. That's how she gave him the mission of Esav, and Yaakov gave his kso, his coat, the ksonas pasim, the coat that was originally the coat of Adam Rishon to Yosef HaTzaddik. So when the brothers came back and the coats full of blood, and they said an animal killed our brother, what does Yaakov Avinu say?

25:36 He's mourning because on the one hand it clearly appears that way, but somewhere deep in his subconscious, what's he really saying? I don't know. It doesn't make so much sense. Which is why all of those years, what was Yaakov saying? I just can't get over his death because it feels to me like he's still alive. Because something wasn't clicking for him. And it makes sense. How in the world did Yaakov Avinu maintain his faith all those years? Could you imagine losing your beloved husband? And then you have one child from that husband, and then you lose that child too? We can't possibly understand the pain that Yaakov Avinu was in. He was still married to Leah. But his Rachel, the Yaakov side of him that was married to Rachel, she's gone, buried on the side of the road. Not even in Maras Amachpela. There's no eternal relationship between Yaakov and Rachel. He lost everything, and then he lost Yoseph. No wonder when they said we have to bring Binyamin down to Mitzrayim, he said no way. You can't possibly take. You can't possibly think I'm going to take that level of risk. This was the last vestige of holding on to himself.

26:40 Nobody takes that risk. How do you hold on when everything is lost? The answer is The sun has already risen. You just have to pay attention to the rising of the sun. If you're going to pay attention to the setting of the sun, you have to pay attention to the rising of the sun. If I could share one message. With this person that called me yesterday, it would be this. Right now, this person I don't know how they're doing it. I just don't know. I said to this person in my conversation with them yesterday, "Do you know that it's okay not to be okay?" And they said back to me I know it's okay not to be okay, and there are times when I'm not okay. But I have to be for my family." And I was like, man That's what an answer, right? That there are only limited times when you cannot be okay going through what you're going through, and I'm just sitting there, my heart's breaking for this person because I care about them very much. I know them a very long time.

27:53 To have to compartmentalize on that level I don't know how you do it. I think that this person knows the secret that I don't know. I think this person knows that they saw the kibah Hashemesh and the setting sun. And for years it was the setting sun and all the chaos and all the pain and all the turmoil. But this person is already able to see the zorcha hashemesh, the rising of the sun, even though the story is far from over. But already this person is holding by the bechina of hope I could see that maybe there'll be a light at the end of the tunnel. That's the bechina of Rav Kiva to live in those dimensions at once. Not only on an individual state, but on a Klal Yisrael state. I think we sometimes forget history, even though it didn't happen that long ago.

28:46 Could you imagine what our grandparents would have said 80 years ago As they marched on those death marches through Poland, as they sat in Auschwitz, as they watched the chimneys pouring out Jewish ashes. If you had told them 80 years from now. The state of Israel is seventy-five years old. Eighty years from now There'll be girls in Talmud Torah in Yerushalayim learning Torah. There'll be guests from Montreal that are able to come all the way from frigid Montreal to warm Yerushalayim and like it's nothing. It doesn't take time. What's the flight from Montreal? Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen hours. Twelve hours. Nothing. Twelve hours And we come in the lap of luxury. Even if you fly all out, you come in the lap of luxury. And what don't we have here in Eretz Israel today? It's not like in the seventies and eighties. I remember when I came for my year in Israel, my mother said, "It's a thing to bring toilet paper with you, because the toilet paper back in the nineties in Eretz Israel was like sandpaper. And people would bring over American toilet paper."

30:03 Any crack and crevice that I had in my luggage was filled with toilet paper. Today we have toilet paper in abundance. You can get it anywhere you want. You can go to Asia and get the softest, kindest, nicest toilet paper. From cashiers they give you a hard time, but in general, the toilet paper is soft. The people are still prickly, but Baruch Hashem, we've come a long way. What would our grandparents have said? It's unbelievable, no? There were those yidden that when they were in that space, kibah Hashemesh, and the entire world sat on them, and they had no vision of no hope. And there were those yidden. I don't blame them. They were living in Gehenna Mamish. And there were those yidden that even in the depths of the darkness, they knew that the sun had already risen. There were those that held on to hope. That's what Viktor Frankl talks about. That in the times of the Holocaust, there were people that stayed alive because they had a mission and a reason to be alive. For them, even though the sun had set, the sun was already rising.

31:10 Our opportunity in life When we're confronting difficult circumstances, we need to pay attention to doing two things at once. You don't have to be Rav Kiva your entire life and say, "I don't feel any pain." That's for a very special type of tzaddik. Rabbi Gamliel and Rabbi Yoshua—they felt legitimate feelings in the marketplace on that day. How can we marry off a child? How can we continue the dynasty of Dovid Malchus and Mashiach in a state of such chaos? It's okay—not only okay—it's encouraged to feel the pain when the pain is happening. But there's another dimension also. That's the dimension of Rav Akiva. That it takes tragedy to have hope. That it takes fear to have courage. So rather than running away from the emotions, lean into them because the rising of the sun only comes because of the setting of the sun. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about right now, and I imagine that 99% of you don't Because Baruch Hashem you're young And for most of you have not yet experienced the real pain that life can bring, and I hope you never do.

32:18 But because you're human, you probably will. So consider this a seed planted somewhere in your subconscious. Ten, fifteen, twenty-five years from now, even though you'll have long forgotten this year. But take in the message. If the sun has set, know that by the grace of Hashem, the sun is rising. Not afterwards. Even in the midst of your pain, the sun is already rising.