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Join Rav Shlomo Katz in uncovering מעלת תפילת נשים—the unique spiritual power of a Jewish woman’s tefillah.
Drawing from Chazal, halacha, and pnimiyut, and learning deeply from the Biala Rebbe’s "Zechut Nashim Tzidkaniyot", we explore why women’s hearts, rooted in רגש טהור (innate emotional purity) and holy bitul, move heaven and earth.
Together we’ll clarify classic questions (time-bound mitzvot, obligation vs. essence), learn the siddur through the eyes of our sages, and translate inspiration into avodah that nourishes real life, especially as we enter Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
This series is both a celebration and a strengthening of the women who daven with fire, carry Am Yisrael with love, and teach us how to speak to Hashem with truth.
Good morning everybody, thank you for coming. Month of חשוון we're learning לעילוי נשמת בת יפה בת ישראל and לעילוי נשמת לוי בן יוסף and for the רפואה שלימה of אליזה חנה בת נעמי and שושנה יונה בת אדל. And the week is sponsored by the Wolfson family, לעילוי נשמת אברהם מרדכי בן יוסף. May his נשמה have an עליה.Alright, if we could please give these pages out.
Thank you. It's been a while since we've had this שיעור between the חגים and other things happening, but it's always good to get back, to jump right back in. And I'll try to remind everyone, or while I'm reminding myself also, the ענין of the last thing that we basically spoke about in this שיעור, that is emphasizing the holiness, the קדושה, the the role that's so desperately needed always, now more than ever, in the world of תפילת נשים, of women's דאווענען, of women's דאווענען. We have so many different examples, we have so many things to look at, and we're slowly, slowly climbing into the heart of this ספר by the ביאלער רבי.
The last thing we learned was לא תירא לביתה משלג כי כל ביתה לבוש שנים. Does anyone remember that?
לא תירא לביתה משלג.
שלג, we learned, was the כליפה of עמלק.
עמלק comes, אשר קרך בדרך.
They come to make you cold. And the כליפה of שלג, in the kabbalistic terminology, is always related to עמלק because they come and try to freeze you, to freeze you from your אמונה, to freeze you from feeling, believing in the השגחה פרטית in our lives. But a woman, לא תירא לביתה משלג, she has no reason to have any fear from שלג, from this כליפה of עמלק, because the warmth of a woman, the warmth that's that's so evident and that's found so deeply in the heart of בנות ישראל, עמלק has nothing on it. So the פסוק says, לא תירא לביתה משלג.
As long as you remember who you are, don't worry, the house is going to be okay as well.
לא תירא לביתה משלג כי כל ביתה לבוש שנים, because a woman has been able to to clothe her children with the proper protective gear from the כליפה of עמלק itself as well. So לא תירא לביתה משלג כי כל ביתה לבוש שנים. Because the כח that the mother has, what she does in the home, is that she provides that those essential garments for her children, for her קינדערלעך as well, if they just look at her, learn from her, breathe her air of of דביקות, then then it's a removal of an anxiety that many people have in terms of, oh my God, am I messing up my children? How much am I messing them up? What are they picking up from me and what am I exposing them to? When a woman's tuned into the פנימיות of her עבודת השם and her role in this world, the the result is לא תירא לביתה משלג.
She has no reason to be scared at all that the כליפה of עמלק can come and enter into the house. You can't say that about a man. This is a תורה, that's ממש, this is a תורה for a woman. A man's whole experience with עמלק and fighting that battle is very, very different.
It's a very different battle. But the battle with עמלק when it comes to women is, we already spoke about that. So that was the last thing we spoke about. What we're going to be seeing today to help us understand deeper this this whole teaching of תפילה, of women's דאווענען, is a word, it's based on a word that we have to make sure we we don't just know, we just don't understand it on a like translational level, but in a פנימיות way.
And that is, as you see on the top, לאשה יש כח הבחנה מיוחד. How would you say the, what would you say the word הבחנה means? Discernment? Discernment. Okay, that's one. What else?
להבחין.
What does להבחין mean? To diagnose? To observe. To distinguish. Distinguish. Does distinguish שטימט? I think so, distinguish.
Now what's so important about the art of distinguishing? Distinguishing what? There's a ברכה. My רצון השם? What's that? My רצון השם. The רצון השם. That's the ultimate goal.
You know, I I've been to so many, I don't know what it is this year, right from the beginning of the year, I've been to so many weddings, been to so many different weddings. And there's a ברכה I try to, I try to always give the חתן and כלה because I think it's a very fundamental blessing in everyone's life, but especially in a home that's about to be, that the process of the בנין, of the בנין should be עדי עד. So I try to say it all the time, and I don't always remember if I do it. I don't know if I said it yesterday, but when someone has the ability to care about that which is important and to להבחין between what's important and not important and not put כוחות in things that aren't important, they're already way, way, way ahead of the game, that the עיקר is really עיקר and the טפל is really, is really טפל.
טפל means not important, right? Can you pass one page up? Thank you.So if a person has the ability to have that ברכה in their life, that the important is important and the non-important is not important, what a ברכה that is. Because when we think about how many, how many areas do we, how much כח, this is a good exercise, how much כח, obviously this is more on an emotional level, how much strength do we give to things that aren't really important? It's not that they're טומאה. That, of course. But that just aren't important.
But we put, we invest so much energy into things that don't really matter and they're not the things that we need to put our קישקעס into. And then think about, well, how many things do I put my קישקעס into? What, and what is what, what is it that I'm dedicating all of my כוחות to?A woman's ability to distinguish between important and not important is something innate. It's a, it's something that was basically, like we're going to see right now, that came within the creation of a woman. Again, not a void you could say by men.
To be able to distinguish between what's important and what's not important is something that already exists in the כח הנשי. We're going to try to discover this, how this came about, and see a lot of different examples. But the whole purpose of what we're learning today and every שיעור is to understand how this relates to דאווענען, to women's תפילה. And this will come up as we go along.
I think it's a very special learning and not, not too complicated, but very מכוון אל המטרה, very focused.לאשה יש כח הבחנה מיוחד.
ונתבאר שמקום האשה ביהדות, as we've learned already, woman's place in Yiddishkeit היא למעלה ממדרגת האיש, is much higher than, than where the man finds himself and where he starts off from.
וביאור עומק ענין מעלת נשים הוא משום שנשים יש להם כוחות נעלים ומיוחדים ועליהן עומד הבית היהודי. The whole Jewish home stands upon the special and significant כוחות that were placed within a woman already within בריאת העולם.
כמו שאנו מוצאים כח מיוחד שיש בנשים, להבחין בפנימיות של כל דבר. As we find, and we'll see with examples we see today, and many things I'm sure will come up for you, that we see a special כח that women have to be able to, now, see, now to say distinguish doesn't work really.
להבחין בפנימיות של כל דבר means… to notice and dissect… To notice and dissect, yeah maybe even dissect is better. To notice and dissect and to, and to be laser beam focused on the פנימיות of everything.כמו שאמרו בגמרא נדה, ויבן השם אלקים את הצלע.
So the גמרא says, when God says, when it says that God built the, the צלע, the rib, right?
מלמד שנתן הקדוש ברוך הוא בינה יתירה באשה יותר מבאיש. This the גמרא says, that God placed בינה יתירה באשה יותר מבאיש. What's בינה? Wisdom?
חכמה is more wisdom. What's בינה? Understanding? So intuition, בינה.
רש"י even helps us one time and he says that when משה רבינו was looking when he starts talking back to עם ישראל, and he says, I was looking for really הבו לכם אנשים חכמים נבונים וידועים. So נבון from the word בינה means שיכולים להבין דבר מתוך דבר.
שיכולים להבין דבר מתוך דבר. I don't even know how to say that in English.
להבין דבר מתוך דבר. Between the lines. Probably as close as we'll get. Not just because it's, because of your name.
But בינה יתירה, more. right? That this בינה, more בינה. A man also has the ability להבין דבר מתוך דבר, but there's something innate in a woman that has this הבנה that's much more פנימי than a man. To dissect this would be a whole another שיעור exactly how this works out with the צלם.
I'm going to keep on going.
ובגמרא ברכות אמרו, אישה מכרת באורחים. Have you ever heard this statement before?
אישה מכרת באורחים. A woman has a very, very clear way of recognizing an אורח, a guest, and what their needs are, and what their needs are.
We will learn this in a second.
שיש לנשים כוח הבחנה מיוחד שאין לאנשים, שכן מסתדר בפשטות שדבר זה שאישה מכרת אינו דווקא באורחים. We're gonna see this is not just when it comes to guests, אלא בכל עניין, rather in anything, any matter.
כי אישה יכולה לראות דברים נסתרים שהאנשים אינם רואים.A man and a woman can be looking at the same thing and see two completely different things.
Like finding something in the refrigerator. Very good example, yes. Well, a man what? Does not... that the male cannot find it and then the female will open the door and it could be right in front of him.
It's right in front of him. I would say that's true about everything in my life, not just the refrigerator. Everything.This ability to see things, it's not that you're, so I want to go back to the example. A man and a woman are looking at something and they see two completely different things.
It's not, it's not that someone sees black and someone sees white. It's that the woman sees black and green and red and purple and, you know what I mean? You see a מכלול of things much more than much more than what meets the eye of the man. It's a, it's just a way of, it's nothing, I'm not, again, this is very important. This is not a man-bashing שיעור.
באמת it's not. It's an, it's just the ability to, it's an attempt to understand the כוח of the בינה יתירה that was placed within a woman. And these are things, these are very important traits that I'm sure you all know already, but it's important to be aware of in the context of תפילה. Now why would it be important to have this ענין of deeper seeing דווקא when it comes to דאווענען? It's very clear.
Sometimes you come and you talk to השם, and you can get so lost in so many things that don't really seem to be important to you, but somehow that's what ends up on the plate of the תפילה. And by a woman, כוח הבחנה מיוחד to get to the target, to get to the עיקר עניין, to focus in, to zoom in on what exactly is needed in the world through my כוח התפילה. What is needed right now? This is a ברכה. This is like, I'm not trying to toot your horn because you didn't do anything to to get this.
This was just the way השם designed the creation of the world. Yes. So then why wouldn't it have been that the מצווה would be מצוות עשה שהזמן גרמא? Like if there's that כוח.So that connects to the beginning of our learning whether, whether the תפילת נשים falls under the category of a מצוות עשה שהזמן גרמא. We've been starting to learn about that, נכון? Interesting.
טוב, צריך עיון, we'll get back to that.Okay, so the third paragraph.
בדבר זה שאנשים יכולות לראות בעיני שכלן, which is a very beautiful terminology what he just said over here. This thing that women can see through the eyes of their שכל, דברים שנסתרים מעיניהם של אנשים, things that are quite often concealed from the eyes of men, רואים אנו בחוש. We see this literally.
כמו שמצאנו אצל שרה אמנו, שדרשה מאברהם אבינו לגרש את בן האמה מביתו. We're gonna see this next שבת. What did שרה tell אברהם אבינו? She sees these two kids. She sees ישמעאל and she sees יצחק.
אברהם אבינו didn't know on his own that ישמעאל needs to be removed from the house? It's very, it's very a weird thing.
אברהם אבינו, אב המון גויים, the first איד, first one to come into a ברית, such a covenant with השם.
השם makes these covenants with him and yet אברהם אבינו, his eyesight is different than שרה אמנו.
שרה is able to look at the situation, understand through the world of her innate sense of חינוך what needs to happen right now.
And she She's the one that ends up telling אברהם אבינו, this kid's got to get out of here.
גרש את בן האמה. It's interesting, just to bring it to our, to our, to our situation. It's like we're still, we're still acting, we still haven't really listened to Mama Sarah.
Like we still have not listened to שרה אימנו. This is like the basic, this is going to be something that may be hard for, by now probably none of you, but maybe one of you, or two of you.
שרה אימנו said גרש את בן האמה, not Rabbi כהנא. You understand that, right? The תורה wrote this.
It's written in the תורה by שרה אימנו. The one of the first interactions she has as a mother raising these two children, even though Hagar's there as well, is that גרש את בן האמה. Now what would you, what would, what would be your experience if, what would you, how would you face it if אברהם אבינו took, said back to שרה אימנו, no, no, no, you see, they have to figure out how to get along. Don't you kind of want him to say that? The, the soft, peaceful place in us doesn't want, no? No one wants to hear that? Come on.
It exists within us. Come on, no, they, they, we could work it out. It could be worked out.
גמרנו, right? So why have we, why is it seemed like such a far-out concept when we use the most basic word that's needed today to deal with our difficulty in ארץ ישראל, that they must be exiled?
חייבים לגרש אותם.
That they have to be... he's sounding fanatic again. Sorry, women, שרה אימנו said this. Because שרה אימנו has a כח הבחנה מיוחד.
She looks at the heart of something. She sees with her בינה יתרה what could be and what simply can't be.So when are you telling that one to the next Prime Minister?I'm sorry?When are you telling that one to the next Prime Minister?לחיים. Yeah.So he explains this here, again, second line, כמו שמצאנו אצל שרה אמנו שדרשה מאברהם אבינו לגרש את בן האמה מביתו, כי ידעה להבחין בפנימיות נפשו של ישמעאל. She was able to...
Now what was the word that you said in the beginning?Discernment.This is probably where this could really be שייך. She was able to discern and gaze deeply into the נפש of ישמעאל. It wasn't just outside behavior that she was seeing like we usually learn about the problems that were happening in the אבינו household, right? Whether between יצחק and ישמעאל. She's just looking at the נפש, the צורה of the נפש of this kid and says like, this and this is כלאים.
This נפש ישמעאלי and this נפש יהודי is כלאים. It's, it's can't, this is not meant to be raised in the same house. You could love each other when everyone knows their own jurisdiction, when everyone knows their own boundaries. You have to love them, they're part of the world.
But they have no chance of being loved the way that their פנימיות נפש, פנימיות נפש, not חיצוניות הנפש.
פנימיות של הנפש is longing to feel love in the world. They don't get it for sure from their parents or anything like that. They could get it from ידים, but not while they're trying to kick you out of your house and burn your life up.
שרה אימנו sees the פנימיות נפש of ישמעאל, and she tells אברהם אבינו.
מה שאברהם, 'cause she knows the פנימיות של הנפש, מה שאברהם אבינו האדם הגדול בענקים לא ראה. As great as אברהם אבינו was, the giant of all giants, the, the beginning, he, he didn't see this. He couldn't see this.
ואף הקדוש ברוך הוא הסכים עמה. And God listens to Sarah. And what does he say?You're right.You're right.
כמו שאמר לאברהם אבינו עליו השלום, כל אשר תאמר אליך שרה, שמע בקולה.
Now whatever אברהם אבינו is told by, by שרה אימנו, listen to her voice. This is what, there's a lot of חסידות on this, on this one word here that should really open up a lot of gates for us. What does it say that he should listen to what? To her voice. What could have it, what could have been said? Her words.
What's the, what's the הבחנה over here? Why do you think השם said listen to her voice? Pay, pay attention to what? To the tone, between the words. Pay attention to what's going on that's much deeper than the actual words that she's saying.
כל אשר.
כל אשר תאמר אליך שרה, כל אשר תאמר אליך שרה שמע בקולה.
Listen to her voice. The voice, the tone can't lie. Words sometimes get in the way of things. But the tone that's emanating from the קישקעס of a woman is דברי אלקים חיים.
It's is the פנימיות of everything.So too, if we go back now to understanding maybe תפילת נשים, you could say that the קול, the voice that's coming from the woman's word woman's words during דאווענען, that's the קול that's מרקיע שחקים, that shakes the heavens. Maybe not as much the words. Maybe the words are more a man's thing. I don't know.
But because I'm just trying to learn out what is what does the Torah telling us by דווקא using, choosing the word שמע בקולה and not necessarily שמע בדבורה or בדבריה. But whatever it is, השם says, follow her lead. She knows what she's talking about. She has the most she has the most powerful כח הבחנה.
That's by שרה אמנו.Yeah.Just to play devil's advocate kind of thing, it could be just because he was אברהם's son versus שרה, who's a step removed from ישמעאל, you know?For sure, no. 100% that could be. Definitely. I mean that that's that would seem to be the I think the most logical explanation to the situation at hand.
100%.נכון. But according to what we're learning, even if it was her son, let's say, she sees things differently than he did. He just can't see it the same way.Right, so I'm sure she saw יצחק differently than the way אברהם אבינו saw יצחק too. 100%.Same thing with רבקה.
Same.We're going to get to it in the next paragraph.No, no, no, it's good, it's good, it's good.
געשטארק. One second.שרה. Yeah.Abraham knew it, he just responded back and he listened to her right away because he knew it, he just needed to be told it.
Because because there was a son, so he needed somebody from the outside to to tell him. Because if he did, because if he had he would have had a more emotional connection because it was his son, so then he needed to be told.יפה. To be able to say, yeah, true, like I knew that.Right, I just needed to I just needed it to come from you. What a תיקון that is for husbands, if they hear עצות from their wives and they said, you know, I knew that, I just really needed to hear it from you.וכן מצינו.
So now, there you see the next paragraph, וכן מצינו אצל רבקה אמנו. We see by רבקה אמנו, כי אף שעשו היה צבוע והסתיר את מעשיו.
עשו was, you know what צבוע means? Two-faced. Right? And he hid his real actions, עשו.
כמו שנאמר ויהי עשו איש יודע ציד. What does this mean? That he was a man that knew hunting?
שפירש רש"י, יודע ציד, he knew how to hunt, to hunt and to cheat his father with his mouth.
לצוד ולרמות את אביו בפיו. And what are the examples that we know? I feel so guilty.
Huh?
מעשר on salt? How do you tithe salt? Other שאלות that were like, what are you talking about? What do you even care about these things? We, you know, the we, the מדרשים fill in a lot of gaps for us and help us understand. On the days that he'd be asking these שאלות to יצחק, he had just come back from murder and rape and and horrible things. Not that I always feel guilty about this, but when I was younger in in high school probably, so I, I checked out from whatever was going on in the classroom כמעט all the time. Not because of I don't think it was because of like ADD or things like that, but just I was already in a different world.
I was reading these I I would read these uh I would put these magazines, these booklets that would come out from רב שלמה about his life because he had just died. All these anything I got my hands on, I would be learning these stories and reading these תורות and but I always didn't I I wanted to keep some kind of level of like showing, so I had a timer that every like 13 minutes, I had this little timer on my stop it was a was one of these stopwatches that had, you remember those that have all those buttons on it, right? Like a calculator and a stopwatch. So I had like a 13-minute timer to to myself to listen to the last thing that the teacher said and then ask a question on that last word.
יודע ציד.
Did I ever tell you this?
יודע ציד.
יודע ציד. To know how to hunt. It's like a בחינה of it's disgusting to say this, it's like feels like what he said, בחינה of עשו, right?
לצוד ולרמות את אביו בפיו.
He knew if I ask a question like this, my אבא will think I actually care about anything that he cares about and I'll have so much. manipulation.
ואצל יצחק אבינו נאמר, what does it say about יצחק? Ah, ויאהב יצחק את עשו כי ציד בפיו. This is actually עשו was like, wow, I'm, יצחק's like, I love this kid.
כי ציד בפיו. He comes back, he knows how to hunt.
פירוש רש"י ומדרשו, בפיו של עשו, שהיה צד אותו ומרמהו בדבריו. Again, like we said before.
The hunting was through the mouth, through hunting meaning hunting and manipulating and turning something over.
אך אצל רבקה נאמר, רבקה doesn't fall for any of that. By the תורה saying by רבקה, ורבקה אהבת את יעקב, she doesn't get involved into any of this. Now, רבקה's כח הבחנה continues throughout the whole story of her life.
Do you know something fascinating? We only find יצחק and רבקה talking one time to each other. Actually, two words that רבקה says to יצחק their whole marriage in the תורה. It's an interesting thing.
יעקב is filled with conversations with רחל and לאה.
אברהם and שרה, I mean in our פרשה we have, אמרי נא אחותי את, and we have things, you know, throughout their lives, but by יצחק and רבקה just one thing. And the one thing she says at the end of פרשת תולדות, she says the words, קצתי בחיי, which means if יענקלה, if our son יעקב doesn't have a world where he could is be where he could find a זיווג הגון, because here she already saw what עשו was doing with the women he was bringing home or leaving to rot in the fields, literally. So she had such a fear in her heart that יעקב אבינו would never have what he really needs. She's so much קשורה to the נפש of יעקב.
She knows the נפש of יעקב. She knows the נפש of עשו. So the only thing we find in the תורה that רבקה says to יצחק, I believe it's the end towards the end of תולדות, that she says קצתי בחיי, meaning, understand יצחק, you've given me a great life and everything and I'm thankful and I don't regret jumping on the, on the on the חמור, the horse, whatever and and and joining with אליעזר that brought me to you. And it's been amazing, but, but you have to understand, if, if יעקב אבינו, if our son doesn't have the proper setting to find a זיווג that's right for him, then what did I come into this world for?
קצתי בחיי.
My my life means nothing to me. And then they come to the decision that yeah, you're gonna go, you're gonna get out of here. You're not gonna have עשו on your neck. You're gonna get out of here.
You're gonna go run away somewhere else. First you're gonna learn תורה for many years in ישיבת שם ועבר, and then you're gonna go to my brother-in-law and he'll, my brother and he'll figure, you know, we'll we'll figure it out from there. But she has this כח הבחנה, רבקה. He continues over here, talking about רבקה.
הסברה נותנת כי כמו שניסה עשו לרמות את יצחק, just like יצחק tried to be, עשו tried to be fooled by, tried to fool his father, כמו כן בוודאי ניסה לרמות אף את רבקה אמנו, כי עשו לא בא אלא לרמות.
עשו comes to this world to trick. To see who will fall prey to his שקר, to his hunting, the hunting of the mouth. And he sees, I tried with mommy, nothing.
Doesn't go anywhere. I tried with אבא and it works. Let me just stick to אבא.
שבחיצוניותו הוא נראה כצדיק.
On the outside, the קאצקער רבי used to always say, עשו wore a שטריימל. Not the way the little מדרש says, illustrated for us when we were younger, because the way the little מדרש illustration, if you remember it, they had this big picture of יצחק, of עשו when he met with יעקב back in פרשת וישלח. Right? When they finally have a reunion. And there it looks like someone that's like a vicious beast with few teeth and gory and everything.
No, no, no, no, no. Sorry, illustrators. It's not how it was.
עשו's whole מציאות was one of being of an illusion, of being fake.
So he wore a שטריימל because he, on the outside, was trying to hunt you any way, shape or form. And this outside he looked like a צדיק, ובפנימיותו הוא רשע מרושע. And on the inside he's a is a total רשע.
כמו שאמרו חז"ל שבאותו היום שמכר את הבכורה, that same day that he sold the birthright, the מדרש tells us, עבר חמש עבירות.
He went, he transgressed with five different עבירות, כמו שאומר המדרש.
חמש עבירות עבר עשו הרשע באותו היום, בא על נערה מאורסה, he took an engaged girl and raped her.
הרג את הנפש, killed someone, כפר.
כפר בתחיית המתים.
He made some statements regarding the fact that there is no resurrection of the dead.
כפר בעיקר, that literally means that he denied the existence of God.
ובזא את הבכורה, and he had, he degraded the birthright.
אך רבקה ידעה מי הוא עשיו בפנימיותו ולכן אהבה את יעקב.
רבקה knew who עשיו was. Therefore she loved יעקב. I know it's still hard to understand this because indifferent to שרה and ישמעאל, עשיו was the biological son of רבקה. Now her ability to not fall prey to her son, her biological son is a very, very, very big thing.
Do you think she loved עשיו? She was attached to the son she carried. There's got to be some sort of אהבה טבעית. Yeah. Yeah.
Even though she could detect that before he even came into this world, he was getting wild every time they passed by when she was when he was in the womb. Remember when she came to complain, it's because every time that רש"י tells us she would pass by a בית מדרש, יעקב אבינו was having a פארברענגען and every time she passed by בית עבודה זרה, עשיו would be the one that would having a פארברענגען inside. But she didn't know that it was twins at that time. That's why she went to.
Right, so once, I guess the moment that she knew that it was twins, was she then from that moment already able to discern and distinguish between the two? Because it seems that from birth, like this whole ענין of even the name of calling him יעקב and the heel and everything, this seems like from birth already, she has this amazing כח הבחנה to understand where, where, where I'm putting my, you know, what am I putting my chips in? Of course, we have the, the world of biblical criticism that בעזרת השם, that should be vanished from the face of the earth, but they have the חוצפה to say if רבקה would have put more effort and love into עשיו, then maybe he wouldn't have turned out the way he did. You think the תורה doesn't know that? So what is the תורה telling us through the eyes of רבקה? That's really the שאלה. What is the תורה telling us over here? And I think it's not for me to answer, it's definitely more for you to answer, but it connects very much back to this ענין of עיקר and טפל. Things that are important versus things that are unimportant.
What did רבקה understand that was the most important thing in the world to happen? Two things. One, the ברכה has to go to יעקב and not to עשיו. Why? Because with her בינה יתירה, with this deep level of להבין דבר מתוך דבר, she understood that if God forbid that blessing would have ended up in עשיו's hand, it would have been the end of what was what began by אברהם אבינו. Those ברכות going into the wrong hands would have been the end.
Further, with the other thing we know about, about רבקה that פשוט, she, it had to be what we said before, יעקב אבינו's שידוך situation. These are things רבקה had a הבחנה. She knew, this, my kid needs this. And maybe if we were just סתם אולי offer our own אני לדעתי, she couldn't say like that about עשיו anything.
She had, she knew his נפש so clearly that she said like, what all this kid really needs is to be tied up in a room and not go and and hurt people. Maybe that's what she said. I don't know. But it's not that she didn't see עשיו.
She, she clearly saw עשיו, like even maybe deeper than the way that שרה saw ישמעאל because עשיו was her own child, yes. It's interesting that שרה and רבקה both saw that both these children have to be separated, but שרה made ישמעאל leave. Right. And רבקה made יעקב leave, and then by separating.
Very interesting. I haven't thought about it like that. But let's, but let's, let's stick on this for a second. So why is that? Why do you think that is? Let's think about the husbands over here in this situation.
אברהם אבינו, maybe רבקה knew that she could never get יצחק to really see who עשיו is, because he was already too intertwined with all the years of being cheated. Maybe that's why it says that he was like blind. Like maybe, maybe I all these years I took it very like translation, like whatever it says, but maybe to him he was just blinded to the truth, and she could see through it. Uh-huh.
Yeah, could be. It could be, yeah. I haven't thought about it, but that's very interesting.
נכון, but that's very interesting.
That you can influence somebody by keeping them close, you can influence somebody by directing them on the right path. Oh yeah. I mean, these are conversations I have with parents all the time regarding פנימיות.
נכון, נכון.
The שאלה that comes up a lot with parents about sending kids out, in the beginning of the conversation, it's always like, what would be best for them? And I realize halfway through the conversation, the real question they're asking is, what would be best for the other kids that are still at home? These are not, there's no blanket statement, there's no like answer here.
נכון, נכון. That's, I think, what you're pointing at, which is, but who, who, who knows that? The mother. Right.
An example, ממש, I had like a week after the beginning of the school year, this thing came up. The mother knew exactly what was needed. It took the father for the kid to go through another week of hell in the place they're in to then listen, be like an עוז מבינו חסיד, and then listen to his wife and and follow through. Listen, it's not always the situation, but it seems to be that when people are plugged in to their own נפש, נשמה, that's how it maps, that's how it pans out.
רבקה knows this.
רבקה has this כח הבחנה.
אך רבקה. But she didn't tell יצחק.
So they didn't have that kind of relationship also. Like it was like a very, he was so introverted and, and בטח. They couldn't, they didn't have an open, it doesn't sound like they had an open communication. Well, again, maybe not an open verbal communication, but הלוואי that people can connect to their spouses one millionth of the way יצחק and רבקה connected to each other.
What's the first experience רבקה has upon seeing יצחק? She falls off the camel. Why? He was, what was going on? Because according to one midrash, he just came out of גן עדן. There's a few years missing in יצחק's lifeline from the time of עקדת יצחק and then when he goes out to דאווען מנחה. The famous ויצא יצחק לשוח בשדה.
There's a few opinions where he was. Some would say that after that, after that experienced, he, to be in this world is not שייך. So some say he went up to גן עדן, some say he went to go learn in the ישיבת שם ועבר. But whatever it is, it doesn't matter.
He went to הגר. To? He went to הגר. He went to the Arab. Well, he goes to, he definitely does that at a certain point because he wants to bring her back to marry, to marry, right, קטורה, to marry his אבא.
נכון. But whatever, wherever he was and whatever was happening, her soul connection to יצחק was, she knew this is, this is who her, she was meant to be. Now, נכון. I mean, listen, he was forty and she was three.
So, maybe that's a little bit of a. Remember? He was around forty and she was like three, maybe he was forty-two already by then. Whatever it is. It is very hard to think of the idea of a mother rejecting her biological child, especially because when we learn about the בן סורר ומורה, the גמרא tells us it never, it never existed.
It never came to the, the parent never had to reject their child.
נכון. But it's very hard to wrap your head around that. Of course.
And the Torah, I think the Torah still believes that we could, that we could, because if it didn't, it wouldn't, it wouldn't, it wouldn't share it like this. There's no happy ending with רבקה and עשיו. There's no happy ending with עשיו בכלל. But the learning, see, what I'm hoping we extract from this is not we go home and figure out, like, really start working with our בינה יתירה and start like noticing, oh, יעקב, that's עשיו.
That's not, חס ושלום, it's not a, and then and then act on that. It's more to trust your innate ability to להבחין בין אמת לשקר, בין עיקר לטפל. That's the, that's the purpose of even looking into the lives of our אבותינו ואמותינו to try to understand what to do with this. Because no one's saying, I've never heard anyone that came to the conclusion based on the פרשיות בראשית to excommunicate a kid based on what they learned in the Torah.
And yet, of course, it's hard. I get. But they didn't excommunicate him. They kept him.
Well. Well, in one case, one kid like you pointed out, one kid is thrown out. That wasn't her Jewish child. And right.
It's just right, but it's a very good what you're saying and what you brought up because as much as you think that it would make sense for רבקה. to convince יצחק to kick out עשו. What is what's the end of רבקה's life? Who does she live with? She doesn't even have יעקב. All she's left with is עשו in the house because she was living for נצח.
So maybe we could say like this, this is actually a גוואלד. Maybe we could say that what the תורה doesn't mention is that רבקה ends up spending the rest of her life with the one, with the boy that for her represented everything that she isn't. But she was willing to do that because deep, deep down in her heart, she still had an אחריות for him.He plain needed her more.Oh, he for sure needed her more, although…That's why he even came to her לוויה. And that's why יצחק wasn't, like when they were looking where where when we don't know where יצחק is, and he wasn't at מערת המכפלה when לאה was buried, they said because יצחק knew that עשו was going to be there.
Because he had, he had some sort of כיבוד אם to be there for the, for the burial.נכון. He, he on the outside he had a lot of things that looked very געשמאק. Maybe you're saying that he had a התעוררות in his heart at the end of his life. Could be.
But רבקה's כוח הבחנה to understand where I put my, what do I put my קישקעס into, all has to do with נצח ישראל, with the eternity of עם ישראל. That's what we're learning from the story about רבקה. But it's still, it's just fascinating to think about that maybe her maybe maybe her like reconciliation or, I don't like to use this terminology because it sounds so, you know, like כאילו we understand these things, but maybe maybe it's that a mama's a mama, no matter what.
שרה wasn't a mama for ישמעאל, so it's much easier to say that.
But a mama's a mama and therefore, even though she knew who, where, what where to invest and what to focus on, and she sends him out, she's at home with with this with with with the other kid.So she never gave up on him.Or else she kept him close because she figured he wasRight.
יצחק clearly never gave up on him. There's a, יש בצאלי speak a lot about that.
יצחק believed that if he was able to be to implement a certain מידה into עשו, he could be like יעקב.
And he was working on it his whole life to put a certain מידה into him because he believed so much in the נפש of his, it's coming from him. He's looking at this kid, he's saying, this is אברהם אבינו's grandson. But that wasn't, that didn't end up being the thing because he becomes עשו essentially is the is the head of an of of of a whole אומה, of a whole nation of אדום. He he comes and completely changes, changes it over.
Yes.I was just thinking that, you know, so that makes a lot of sense that the kid that the mother is the least identifies with personality-wise is the kid that is pursuing that relationship because they feel a חסר. And you see it over and over again.Yeah.
נכון. נכון.
So he ends up here and he says like this, ומתבאר, what we learn from all this third paragraph, שיש לאשה כוח הבחנה מיוחד שאין לאיש. So what we're basically learning from all this is that a woman has כוח הבחנה, the ability, an innate power to identify something as what it really is.
ומטעם זה, it's for this reason, הטילה התורה את עיקר מצוות החינוך על האמהות יותר מן האבות, כמו שיתבאר. As much as we'll see the father has a חיות to teach the children, the עיקר מצוות חינוך was placed on the mothers, not on the father, more than the fathers, as we will explain later on.
Why? It's very easy to understand this now because a mama knows what I need better than or easier, more than what my a father knows what I need. This is something that's that that that was השם placed within the בריאה. It doesn't mean a father doesn't want the best for his kid. It doesn't mean the father doesn't want to to help and add וכו'.
But that the הבחנה, the diagnosis to to that's really how it's used a lot today in the medical field, מה איבחון, right?
איבחון means diagnosis.Assessment.Huh?Assessment.So I say diagnosis?הבחנה.No, not a diagnosis.
הבחנה, איבחון.It's the same part, same family maybe.It's all synonyms. So it's all the same, this is where the mother has the these excel, she just has it.
וסיבת הדבר, and the reason for this, כיון שהאמהות מכירות בעין בוחנת.
את פנימיות נפש ילדיהן ומבינות את צרכיהם. Because a mother has able to know the נפש of their children in a more intimate way, and they, and when what does it mean that you know the נפש of your child? It means that you understand and have a better capability to דאווען over what they really need. That is the purpose of why we learned this whole פרק today. Because if I could have the ability to know what you really need, then my דאווען is much more direct and it's much more, it's clear to me what I'm דאווען for.
Men show up to שול, hopefully with like half an eye open, and we דאווען and we try to, you know, we get, we get through. Once in a blue moon the דאווען really gets through us. A woman comes to שול with her תפילה, even if she comes to מנין, it's a completely different experience of דאווען than the way that a man דאווען. Which will explain to us in a deeper way, separation between sexes during דאווען.
These are things of פנימיות when you want to explain to people, you know, that are asking from a very loving and and humble place. You know the conservative movement movement had an, had this amazing campaign, I think in the late, in the 70s or the early 80s when they were still like, when it was still like an entity. Today it's it's בכלל, it's it's כמעט ולא. It's it's not such a strong entity in the States like it used to be, at least when I was growing up.And they had a, Rabbi Riskin told us this.
He said, the the slogan was, families who pray together stay together. That's a that's an amazing marketing tool. No? That's an amazing thing. Very Christian.
Huh? Very. However, Right. I'm just picturing like grace before a meal. Yeah.
No, but but their thing was כאילו, if we're going to come to temple, we'll come to synagogue, but we'll, and and we're in our, we're together, like that then then כאילו, that'll give כוח וקיום for us to continue. Of course, this was a, you know, doesn't sound יידיש, but it sounds very, very tempting to the ears of a modern Jewish family living in the United States in the 70s and 80s. Are you kidding? There's nothing more, Huh? Everything's equal there. It was, well, it was already starting back then.
But but Rabbi Risk, so Rabbi Riskin had to, I mean, I forget what he changed that slogan for Lincoln Square Synagogue, they used something else, but כאילו building off of that that still kept things separate. Um, but over here, when we're looking at the need for there to be a separation between men and women in דאווען, it's very clear. It's two completely different energies going on. Two completely different energies, each one doing their own thing in the right place.
100%.Um, so no pressure, women, but if you have this כח האבחנה, if this is something that's, you know, so strong innate within you, עם ישראל is still in a state of somewhat of a confusion, of a daze of, where what what's going on? Where are we putting our energy into? Like what what's כדאי? Are we, like we started talking about on שבת, are we ready to start rebuild now or do we still wait, or are we mourn, was it post-trau, לא יודע, a lot of בלבולים. But the the חכמת נשים and the בינה יתרה is able to discern and to crack through a lot of different things that may seem important, to know what's important. And therefore the תפילה of women today, what a, what an essential, essential piece, if not the cornerstone of the world of דאווען that the world is waiting for עם ישראל to lead, you know, to lead and to show us how to, how to come back to בית השם. I just want to encourage all of you to believe in, to believe in the way that you דאווען, to believe in your notion of knowing what's important, what's not important.
And בעזרת השם, open up many, many gates for many other people that they don't even realize that they're waiting to דאווען. They just no one ever showed them how to. And they're just waiting for one person to open a gate for them. So בעזרת השם it'll be on you.
Smile, it's a...