Purim 5782 – An Unspoken Topic of Purim
In Honor of our Parents Alfred & Esther Harary by their Children & Grandchildren
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Shiur presented in 5777
In Honor of our Parents Alfred & Esther Harary by their Children & Grandchildren
Visit YTATorah.org
Shiur presented in 5777
In this week’s parshah, the Torah tells us about Yaakov Avinu, who found himself in double jeopardy. Number one, he hadn’t yet gotten married. He was no youngster anymore. He was in his sixties. So he was an older gentleman already and he was not married. His father had gotten married at the age of 40. So Yaakov Avinu was way over the top. That was one situation he was facing. The second challenge that he was facing was that…
The subject we’d like to discuss today is an important one because many people pose the following question. The Torah says: I created an evil inclination, and I created Torah as its antidote (Kiddushin 30b). So that means to say that the antidote, the counterforce for the yetzer hara, is Torah.
The Torah relates that after Klal Yisrael came out of Mitzrayim, they witnessed the greatest historical event and the greatest revelation up to that point in the history of the world. They saw myriads of makkos, hundreds of makkos. They saw Hashem taking apart Mitzrayim brick by brick. They saw Hashem playing with the Mitzri’im. They saw krias Yam Suf. They were able to point with their finger and say זה קלי ואנוהו, “this is My God, and I will glorify Him” (Shemos 15:2). They saw ananei hakavod, clouds of glory.
The Ramchal writes, in Derech Hashem, about the concept of gilgulei neshamos, how a person could come back in different forms. As a matter of fact, one person can even have a number of neshamos. There are many people who don’t understand what motivates them and where they get their koach from. The gemara tells us, for example, that Rabbi Yochanan said: “I come from the offspring of Yosef.”
We have previously discussed the sin of the dor hamabul and we showed you the words of Rabeinu Tam, who says that if a person starts with a little bit of ta’avah and he allows himself to do whatever he wants, there’s no end to it.
I wanted to just point out that this was clearly demonstrated in the generation of the mabul.
The big sugya in this parshah is the marriage of Yaakov Avinu to Rachel and Leah. There are many things that we need to learn and study and analyze from Yaakov’s marriage because they could be very relevant to us.