Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Today we are going to be talking about two types of covenants.
[00:00:05] When you buy a house, you get a deed on your house and this deed is given to you by the previous owner, right? And then you record this deed.
[00:00:18] Very often these deeds have covenants on them.
[00:00:24] It could be a restrictive covenant, let's say in this house, I mean a typical one, this house can be only a residential house, only one family dwelling.
[00:00:34] You're not allowed to buy this property, tear down this house, an apartment building. You're not allowed to build a factory here. Right.
[00:00:41] These are restrictive covenants which are recorded in every deed.
[00:00:46] Now let's say you're buying a property that was established 100 years ago.
[00:00:56] The house was built on it subsequently.
[00:01:00] And when this house was built, when this property was allotted, they put restrictive covenants on that property.
[00:01:09] And then this house was sold multiple times after that.
[00:01:14] And every time it was sold, a new deed had to be recorded.
[00:01:19] And the original deed, let's say, had a specific restrictive covenant. Usually there are many of them. But let's say one of these restrictive covenants was not recorded. An attorney did a sloppy job. An attorney missed this specific comment. It was not recorded.
[00:01:37] And the way they did was passed to you.
[00:01:40] It doesn't have this restrictive covenant anymore.
[00:01:43] This covenant is option.
[00:01:45] And you do specifically what this covenant would have prohibited you from doing. You being a good, proper citizen, law abiding citizen, you looked at your covenant and you saw that doesn't say that you don't have to do it, you did it.
[00:02:00] And then let's say many years later, somebody comes after you and says, oh, one second, long time ago, this property had a deed that was not allowing you to do it. You said, well, my covenant doesn't say that.
[00:02:15] Let's say neighbors get upset, as it happens. Yes. And you end up in courts.
[00:02:22] So are you obligated to follow this covenant that was not in the deed that you have received?
[00:02:30] That's right.
[00:02:31] You did everything according to the law.
[00:02:34] Because covenant is supposed to have what they call chain of custody. If you cannot establish this chain of custody, they cannot come now and say, oh, one second, one second. Fifty years ago this covenant was here. He said, well, when I bought it, it wasn't here.
[00:02:48] So every covenant needs to have a chain of custody. That's the only way how covenants are transferred from one person to another.
[00:02:55] This how our legal world works.
[00:02:59] Now let's look now at us Jews. We also have a covenant and one might even say it's a quite restrictive covenant.
[00:03:09] We made a Covenant with God.
[00:03:12] God gave us the Torah at Mount Sinai. Moses Moshe Rabbeinu comes down with ten commandments and then gives us subsequently more commandments. We have this covenant called the Torah.
[00:03:25] 40 years pass now. Jews are about to enter the land of Israel.
[00:03:31] And before Mourisha Rabbeinu, before Moses passes away, he addresses the Jews again. You have to understand that it's already the next generation. The previous generation received the Torah. Now it's all new people here.
[00:03:45] And Moshe Rabbeinu makes sure to tell them that they are entering that very covenant that their parents have entered in. They are part of that covenant.
[00:03:58] And in the very beginning of the chapter of Netzavim, Moshe Rabbeinu says, it's not only you that I'm making this covenant with, but also with the generations that will come later after you.
[00:04:11] Well, here's a question. In the Torah itself, it's already said that Jews have to keep these commandments for perpetuity. It already says that Jews have to obey the God's law in the future.
[00:04:24] So what is it that he's doing now? And why does he need to say that he's making this covenant with the future generations? It's already self understood. What is he telling people right now? So this is a very important point.
[00:04:38] I would assume that if God made a covenant with Jews who was standing at Mount Sinai and he told them that your future generations have to obey by it, this covenant would work just like covenants on a real estate deed that we have today work. It works the same way. You pass it from generation to generation, from father to son, from mother to daughter, and you receive it from your parents. And whatever you receive from your parents, that's what you have to follow.
[00:05:09] But what about those who didn't receive it from their parents?
[00:05:13] You have probably met a couple people today who have not received any information about Judaism or Jewish observance from their parents. These people do exist, believe it or not.
[00:05:22] And so you would say, one second.
[00:05:25] This person will say, just like a guy who is looking at his real estate deed, he'll say, one second. Doesn't say anything about XYZ here, so I'm not obligated by it. This Jew who didn't receive any of this information from his parents will say, one second. God, I want to know exactly what you want from me. Let me see. What did my parents tell me? My parents didn't tell me any of that. Okay, so I can be a good Jew without following any of these laws. Works for me.
[00:05:52] Or let's say, what about the person who's converting to Judaism, a girl.
[00:05:56] He says, I didn't get anything from my parents. So what am I supposed to follow here?
[00:06:01] So this is why Moishe Rabbeinu says here that you Jews are now entering into this covenant with God. And not only you are entering into this covenant, the future generations are entering into this covenant as well. Individually.
[00:06:19] Moishe Rabbeinu had all the future generations in front of him. Their souls were right there.
[00:06:24] And he says, your connection to this covenant, your connection to God is not through previous generations. Your connection to God is direct.
[00:06:34] It's like you are getting this document directly from its source.
[00:06:38] And this is specifically very interesting. When we pray, when we read our Sidur, we always mention that God is God of our fathers. Why?
[00:06:49] Because we emphasize that we receive this tradition from our fathers and we also emphasize their merits. We want God to remember how much previous generations did and how righteous they were.
[00:07:01] That's why we say always that you are God of our fathers. But what do we always say?
[00:07:08] Always say, first our God. And then we say, God of our fathers, You are our God. And that also, by the way, you are God of our fathers. But first and foremost, for me, what does it mean? For me, the most important thing, that he is my God.
[00:07:26] My connection with him is direct.
[00:07:29] And here's another very interesting thing.
[00:07:32] Medrash says this strange statement. It says that there are three knots, three ties, three links that connect together.
[00:07:45] A link between Jews and the Torah, Jews, the Torah and God.
[00:07:52] One second, if you look at it, the math doesn't make sense. Looks like these rabbis were a little off in their math.
[00:07:59] If you have three entities, Jews, Torah and God, there are only two links between them. To connect three entities, you need to have two nuts. Two ties, not three.
[00:08:09] Why do you say there are three ties? That's the whole point.
[00:08:12] Because after Jews are connected to the Torah and Torah is connecting them to God, then this loop circles down back to the Jews and direct Jews and connects Jews directly to God.
[00:08:26] Without the Torah originally, you would not have connection with God. If we would not be given the Torah, the Jewish nation wouldn't exist.
[00:08:34] Jews were established as a nation when the Torah was given. You know that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Abraham, Yaakov, they were officially the first Jews. But really they were not part of the Jewish nation. They were part of Jewish religion before the Torah was given.
[00:08:50] Whoever observed the Torah, whoever followed the Torah, was Jewish, and whoever didn't was not Jewish. That's why Avram had two sons. One of them followed the Torah, he remained Jewish. The other one didn't follow the Torah. He was not Jewish. And then subsequently Avram had many more sons from his wife, Keturah, Hagar. And they were not observing the Torah as well. And they were not Jewish.
[00:09:16] And then we look at Yaakov, he had a brother, Asaph. Yaakov stayed Jewish. Asaph didn't want to have anything to do with the Torah. He wasn't Jewish anymore. That's it.
[00:09:29] But we see from that nobody says that Ishmael was a non observant Jew. Nobody says that because he was not a Jew.
[00:09:40] So the question is, if Ishmael was born in a Jewish household and his parents were Jewish, because before the Torah was given, who was a Jew only? Whoever follows the Torah. Judaism. Before the Torah was given, Judaism was like any religion today.
[00:09:57] If we will look at Christianity, whoever follows it, you will walk over to a person who is a devout Muslim. He'll tell you, I'm a Muslim because I am following this religion called Islam. That's why I'm a Muslim. His brother or his sister who are not following these religions, he'll tell you are not Muslim now. And that's how it was before the Torah was given with the Jewish faith.
[00:10:21] After the Torah was given, we now have a Jewish nation. Jewish nation was established when the Torah was given. That's why the definition of a Jew that we have today is somebody whose ancestry on his mother's side were present at the giving of the Torah. Just this very definition itself assumes that before giving of the Torah there was no such thing as Jewish nation.
[00:10:41] Now we are Jews only because of the Torah. At the moment when the Torah was given, that's when we became Jews. You are Jewish today only because your ancestors on your mother's side were there at the event when the Torah was given at Mount Sinai.
[00:10:58] So that means that our connection with the Jewish nation, our connection with God, our connection with Judaism is only through the Torah. So if our connection with God and with being Jewish is only through the Torah, then how can you have now a Jew who's going to tell you I'm a non observant Jew? It seems like the entire connection of Jews to Judaism is only through the Torah.
[00:11:22] A saying I'm a non observant Jew should be as strange as saying I'm not a religious Catholic. How could it be not religious? People will tell you I'm an atheist. I'm a Jewish atheist.
[00:11:34] There are plenty of people who will tell You I'm a Jewish atheist. Other people will tell you, I'm a Catholic atheist. There's no such thing as a Catholic atheist or Protestant atheist or Muslim atheist or Buddhist atheist.
[00:11:44] Why is it so? How is it possible there is such a thing as a Jewish atheist?
[00:11:49] Believe it or not, these people who are trying to denounce their connection with Judaism, these very people who are trying to denounce their connection with Judaism, they are capable of saying it. They are saying it only because deep inside they recognize that their connection to God and their connection to Judaism is not only through the Torah. And this is exactly what it says, that there are three ties. There are three links.
[00:12:13] Initially, we were connected first to the Torah, and the Torah connected us to God. But once we got connected to God, it loops back to connect us Jews directly to God, bypassing the Torah.
[00:12:25] Our souls connect us to God directly.
[00:12:29] So this Jew who is telling you, I'm an unobservant Jew, I'm atheist Jew, I'm not religious Jew, whichever way they phrase it, they think that they are coming to denounce this religion or this religious connection. In reality, they are doing it because deep inside they understand how deep this connection is. They're only underscoring what it says in the Torah, that our connection to God is deeper than our connection just through the Torah.
[00:12:57] So interesting thing that even though the Torah is what is establishing everything about a Jew, we became Jewish nation only because of the Torah. The Torah describes what are Jews. The Torah is guiding Jewish life. The Torah is defining what Judaism and Jew is.
[00:13:16] Yet our connection is far deeper than the Torah itself. And we see it specifically now at the time of our holidays, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur.
[00:13:30] Why?
[00:13:31] Because Rosh Hashanah is called Yom Hadin, which means a day of judgment. Yom Kippur is a day of atonement. Atonement means after we were judged.
[00:13:42] If it is discovered that we need to fix things, we fix them.
[00:13:47] But when women light Yomto candles for Roshana, they say Yom Hadin. When we refer to this day in our kiddush and in our davening in prayers, we say Yom Hadim, day of judgment. So it's a day of judgment. Roshana is day of judgment. So now I want to ask a question. If it's a day of judgment, why is it a holiday?
[00:14:08] Usually when people have a court date pending, the court date is not established in their calendar as a holiday.
[00:14:15] It's a little bit opposite of a holiday.
[00:14:18] And the answer is because when we turn to God during our prayers on that day on Rosh Hashanah, what do we say? Avinu malkeinu. God is our king. He's judging us. But before we mention he is king, we also mentioned he's our father.
[00:14:34] So a father is creating rules for his children. A father is trying to impart wisdom to his children. This is a function of every parent. Every father should be, first of all, teaching his children life lessons, teaching them wisdom, and second of all, creating rules for life. Whatever child is going to pick up during his formative years from his parents, these are the rules he's going to be living with for the rest of her life, for the rest of his or her life.
[00:15:07] So that's why we as parents better give them good rules that they will be living by.
[00:15:13] So God is also doing the same thing. God is giving us his wisdom, and God is creating these rules for us that we live by. But I want to ask you a question.
[00:15:24] Is your connection to your children because of these rules? Is your connection to your children dependent on how well they obey these rules? Is your connection to your children dependent on how well they absorb your wisdom? No.
[00:15:39] If kids don't behave and if kids don't learn this wisdom, their father still loves them.
[00:15:44] This is exactly what Rosh Hashanah is.
[00:15:48] God is our Father who's giving us his rules and his wisdom, but he is also our father.
[00:15:54] And that's the main connection. That's why the Day of Judgment is a holiday, because we know he's our father. You are going in front of a judge who knows your father.
[00:16:02] And there's a midrash that says, they asked the Torah, what should a person do if he sinned? The person who sinned, what should happen to him? The Torah said, the person who sinned should be punished.
[00:16:16] Every judge knows that.
[00:16:19] Then it says they asked God, what should a person who sinned do? And God said, when a person sins, he should repent, he should fix himself, and then he's going to be forgiven. Now let me ask you a question.
[00:16:33] In any court of any country, if a person has done something wrong and he's going in front of a judge and he says, I repented. I changed my life. I'm a different person. I'll never do it again.
[00:16:46] Judges do have some room for their discretion.
[00:16:50] The judge might lessen his sentence by tiny bit, but the judge can say, okay, you repented. That said, innocent, go party. No judge is ever going to say that. Because in the world of judgment, that doesn't exist. The Torah, you see, Torah is called the truth. Torah is the truth with a capital T. And the Torah has its laws and Torah has its principles. And whoever sin has to suffer the consequences. But our connection is deeper than just connection with the Torah. Our connection with God is direct.
[00:17:20] And that's why when we do something wrong, if we really repent, God says, okay, I see you repented. If God sees that we really did teshuvah, we repent. God says, no problem.
[00:17:33] Starting from New Slate. And that was specifically why we read about all this before Rosh Hashanah.
[00:17:42] Because this is the message of Rosh Hashanah. This is the message that God wants us to walk away with. That it is, on the one hand, a day of judgment. But on the other hand, we should know that the judge is our father, who has a much deeper connection with us than just the judgment. That's a very delicate balance for every parent. Every parent wants to make sure that his kids will follow his rules.
[00:18:04] And there are things that the kid could do which are beyond the pale, and the parent could be really upset at him when he does it. When this child does something really, really abhorrent, the parent must convey this to him. The parent must make sure that the kid who understands what he did. But on the other hand, this kid also needs to know that this parent loves him unconditionally and accepts him and still is there for him. And it's a very, very delicate balance for every single parent and for every single situation.
[00:18:35] And many, many parents, myself, including, have a very difficult time finding this balance.
[00:18:43] And this is exactly what God is supposed to do here.
[00:18:46] God, on one hand, is trying to convey to us that there are rules and we need to follow these rules for our own good. But on the other hand, God still wants us to remember that he's our father.
