The title that was given for tonight's topic is The Family Unit. Now, people wonder, what does that title mean? Well, I guess, I hope after I'm finished, you'll understand what the title means. But basically it's to discuss the stress that the Torah puts on the concept of a family in addition to the stress on every individual as an individual, as a יחיד, as an individual. We know that every individual is holy, every individual Jew is a Jew, and every individual Jew has a neshama, a חלק אלוקה ממעל ממש, part of Hashem, and every individual has a mission in this world, and every individual is given the power, the strength and the proper power to do what he's supposed to do. Nevertheless, we do find that the Torah, besides looking at every individual Jew as who he is as an individual, the Torah also looks at every individual Jew as part of a family, part of a mishpacha, as part of a family. We find it, for instance, in the parsha Bamidbar where the Torah talks about counting the Jews. In the beginning of Bamidbar it says Hashem commanded Moshe Rabbeinu to count the Jewish nation. And what he wanted to know was the amount of Jews that you have in each tribe, and then he wanted to know the amount of Jews that you have in the whole Jewish nation. So, the way to count it was, we would assume, to count all the people from each tribe, and then you get a number of how much people you have in the tribe. And then you add up the numbers of all the tribes and you get the sum total of how many Jews you have in the whole nation. The Torah says that when Hashem told him to count the Jews of each tribe, the Torah adds the word למשפחותיהם, according to their families. They didn't count individuals to say 1 2 3 4 5 10 20 50 100 1,000, that's not how it went. They got the families together, and they counted the individuals, but based on families. This family has 20 people, so now we have 20 people. This family has 20 people, so now we have 40 people. So, they counted the Jews according to the families. Obviously, there is something special, even when you're looking at each individual, there is something special concerning each individual in connection, from the viewpoint of him being part of a family. And we find that in many things in the Torah that the Torah looks at people, at the Yidden, at individuals, but not from the point of view of being as an individual, but part of a family. When Hashem gave the Torah and He told Moshe Rabbeinu to go to the Yidden and prepare them, tell them, tell them that they should be ready, so it starts off by Hashem saying כה תאמר לבית יעקב ותגיד לבני ישראל. This is what you should say to בית יעקב, בית יעקב means the house of Yaakov, of Jacob. Now, the Gemara and Rashi do say that בית יעקב refers to the women and בני ישראל refers to the men. But the very, the very, very simple peshat in pasuk is that בית יעקב refers to Jewish nation, and בני ישראל refers to the Jewish nation, they're just other words referring, describing the Jewish people. So, we describe them as בית יעקב and we describe them as בני ישראל, but when we describe them as בית, we right away use the word בית, which is a house, and it doesn't mean a physical house, it means a household, which is a family, which is which means in other words that Hashem said to Moshe, go speak to the Yidden and prepare them to matan Torah, how should you prepare them? Speak to them as בית יעקב, as being a family of Yaakov, looking for through them as the concept of a family. And we find many other places where the Torah wants to describe or talks about a certain part of Yidden, we refer to it as בית. There's בית מלכות and בית יהודה, בית בית, and the word בית means not a house, not a physical house, even though sometimes it does, but many times the word בית means a family. But the bottom line is that we do find in the Torah that the Torah puts the stress on the Yidden being members of their families, not only as being individual people or being part of כלל ישראל, but also as being members of the family. Obviously, there's a very important idea here that we look at Yidden, the importance of being family-wise, having part of a family. Now, what is the reason why it's so important to stress the point of mishpachah, family? Why won't we stress just the fact that you're individuals, you're a Yid? You're a Yid and that's it. Why is it important to be part of a family? What is the inyan of a family? And we see an interesting thing, It says in Kabbalah that the שם הוי׳, the name of Hashem, the real, real name of Hashem, Hashem has many names, many, many names. You have simple names like רבונו של עולם and השם יתברך and Hamakom, all kinds of names. Then you have the famous seven names which are called שבעה שמות שאינם נמחקים, seven names that are so holy that if you write them, you can't erase them. Those are the holiest names. Out of those names, which is the, the most important name? Is the שם הוי׳, י-ק-ו-ק. Sometimes referred to שם הוי׳ as the שם העצם, the name of the essence. Sometimes we call it the שם המפורש, the, how do you translate מפורש, the, the explicit name. Sometimes we refer to it the שם המיוחד, the specific name, anyway, the שם הוי׳. So it says in Kabbalah, the שם הוי׳ has four letters. Why does it have four letters? Four letters represent, this י-ק-ו-ק represent the father and the mother and the son and the daughter. Father and the mother and the sons and the daughters, this represents the Jewish family. A family is made up of two parents and children, that's what normally a family is. So the שם הוי׳ has the יו״ד represents the father, the ק״י represents the mother, as we'll explain later why the יו״ד and the ק״י, why they represent the husband and the wife, the father and the mother, and the וא״ו and the ק״י, that represents the children. על פי קבלה, anyone that's familiar with Kabbalah or Chassidus knows that יו״ד is חכמה, ה״א is בינה, and the וא״ו is the six מדות, ז״א, and the, the last ה״א is מלכות. Now, ז״א מלכות is referred to in Kabbalah as זכר ונקבה, ז״א ונוקבא. נוקבא means נקבה. זכר ונקבה, which is male and female. The truth is יו״ד ק״י, חכמה and בינה also is the male and the female as we'll see later, but the two, the יו״ד and the ק״י, the יו״ד and the first ה״א is the male and the female, the father and the mother, the husband and the wife. And the וא״ו and the ה״א is also male and female, that's the son and the daughter, so, so it represents the whole family structure, and that's in the Shem Havayah. And Shem Havayah, every letter is part of the name. It's not that you could have Shem Havayah with only three of the letters and one could be missing. Every single letter is part of the name, and to have the complete name you have to have all four. Which means in order to be connected to Hashem, to Hashem completely, so looking at it from our perspective, from down here, there has to be a family. You have to have the יו״ד and the ק״י, the father and the mother, and the son and the daughter, which is sons and daughters, the children, then you have the complete family, then you have a Shem Havayah. That's why we find there are mitzvot in the Torah of behavior and respect and relationship between the father and the mother, husband and wife, the wife and the, and the husband, the mother and the father, the parents to the children and the children to the parents. You have all kinds, there are all kinds of dinim of what a husband is supposed to do to his wife. Bichlal, generally speaking, the Gemara says that you have to give her kavod, respect, and you have to love her and all kinds of things. It says give her respect, it says you're supposed to love her like yourself and respect her even more than yourself. The, the wife, it says איזה אשה כשרה העושה רצון בעלה, what's a כשר, fine woman, a wife? When she does her husband's will. And then there are dinim in relationship between the parents and the children. There's a mitzvah of chinuch, very important mitzvah, one of the most important mitzvot of chinuch, of educating the children, that's a mitzvah. Then we have the mitzvot of the children to the parents, which is כבד את אביך ואת אמך, כיבוד אב ואם. We have all kinds of mitzvot and all kinds of dinim and minhagim and things in connection to the family. Because the family together, that makes up the שם הוי׳ על פי קבלה, because there is something special in the family structure besides us being part of כלל ישראל and besides us being individual as we are.

Now to understand what is the מעלה of the family structure, of the family unit, we know bichlal by yidden, we, we're made up of, the Klal Yisrael is made up of two, we look at this from two angles, two ways. There is the יחיד and the ציבור. There is the individual, each individual person as a איד, and then you have the ציבור, you have the community, the whole community. And every איד has both of these ענינים. He is an individual, he's a איד, besides that, he is part of the community, he's part of a ציבור. And when we say that every איד is part of the ציבור, it doesn't mean that it's, the ציבור doesn't mean that you have a lot of people getting together that makes a community. A community that we talk about that על פי תורה is a ציבור, it's not a gathering of many individuals. You have a hundred individuals that make one group. That's true by everybody, by גוים להבדיל also, they have a hundred people, make one group. But it doesn't turn into a new entity. It's not a new entity. It's just a hundred people getting together, so it's a group of a hundred people. By us, by Yidden, we know that ציבור means there is a separate entity called ציבור, a community, which even though it's made up of all the individuals, but all the individuals basically lose their individual identity as part of the ציבור, and they become one new unit called a ציבור. That's why, for instance, there is a דין in Gemara, Rambam, that when a person would want to donate something to the בית המקדש, and the בית המקדש was property of the ציבור, of the community, it wasn't an individual property, and the korbanot that were brought were from the ציבור. If someone wanted to donate something to the ציבור, it says the לשון in the Gemara is מסריה לציבור יפה יפה, you have to give it away to the ציבור completely, drop every individual connection you have to it, and give it away completely to the ציבור, because the ציבור is an entity for itself that is made up of all the Yidden together, but not a ציבור of a thousand, of a million people. The million people together make up one new entity called a ציבור. And we find that from the beginning on. By Matan Torah, Hashem said אנכי השם אלקיך. How did Matan Torah, עשרת הדברות start? אנכי השם אלקיך, I am Hashem, your God, אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים, I took you out of מצרים, etc., etc. Hashem did not say אנכי השם אלקיכם. He didn't say I am your God in plural. He said in the singular. Why did He say in the singular? So Chazal tell us that the reason He said in the singular is for two opposite reasons, and they're both true. One reason He said it in the singular because He spoke to every Jew individually. When He said עשרת הדברות, He didn't say it to everybody. He said it to every individual person. And the Midrash actually says that every single person felt that עמי הדיבור מדבר. He felt as if Hashem is looking at him and talking to him, individually. Another reason it says singular, not plural, because it was talking to Klal Yisrael as one. If it would say plural, it would mean many people. He didn't speak to many people. He spoke to one, one each individual, and He spoke to כלל as one entity, because we are all really one. And because of that, because we say that the tzibbur means that there is one big entity which all the people are part of it, but it's not made up of many individuals, they lose their individuality and they become one, that's why the Gemara says ציבור לא מת. The community does not die. There is no such thing as a new community. Individuals die, a person dies, then there is somebody else who takes over, there's another person. But the tzibbur, the same community that we had a hundred years ago and a thousand years ago, is now, because if the community would be made up of individuals, then when these individuals are not here anymore, a hundred year passes, they're new individuals, so it's a new community. Since we're saying that there is no more individuals, this is all a concept of a tzibbur, and this is the tzibbur of Klal Yisrael, so as it goes on, you might have new people coming there, but the new people become part, they lose their individuality, they're part of the same tzibbur from before, and as the years goes on, it's all, all the same tzibbur. And the Rebbe once said, based on this Gemara, that because of that, we now are not a continuation of the Yidden who stood by Har Sinai. We are actually the same tzibbur, because the tzibbur is a unit of Klal Yisrael which doesn't change. That is in, as long as there are Yidden, there is the same tzibbur. The Gemara actually says this לגבי הלכה. The Gemara says that when the Yidden built the second Beit HaMikdash, they brought a korban. There was a special קרבן חטאת that the Yidden brought. And the Gemara says, what was the korban for? A chatat you bring for a sin. And the Gemara says it was for the sin that they did at the end of the first Beit HaMikdash. They did an aveirah, they worshipped avodah zarah, they bowed down to the idol that Nevuchadnezzar wanted them to bow down. So when they built the second Beit HaMikdash, they brought a korban for it. And the Gemara asks, but many of the people died, this was seventy years later, many of the people died. And there's a special halachah by a קרבן חטאת, that קרבן חטאת שמתו בעליה, if the owner, the one that did the aveirah, is not alive, let's say he set aside an animal for a קרבן חטאת, and then he died, that korban cannot be used anymore. So here, the korban that was brought by these people because of their aveirot, but many of the people died. So it's a קרבן שמתו בעליה. The Gemara says no, ציבור לא מת. The community did the aveirah, and that community is the same. It continues. So the concept of tzibbur, besides in contrast to יחיד, to individual, individual you're an individual and as long as you live, you live, and when you finish, there's somebody else takes over your place, there's another person that's individual. But the tzibbur, it's all the same tzibbur. That's one מעלה of the tzibbur, a spiritual מעלה that in halachah, it has the concept of continuity, more than that, it's all one. And that's why it's so important to feel part of the tzibbur. In the Gemara we find, in Pirkei Avot, the terrible aveirah of being a פורש מן הציבור. If someone says, \"I don't want to be part of the tzibbur,\" that Gemara says that's a terrible aveirah, by all kinds of places where we find that a person is פורש מדרכי ציבור. You have to be part of the tzibbur, because then you are part of this כלל, which is the same one Klal Yisrael from all the years. But besides that, there is a גשמיותדיקע reason for a tzibbur, because each individual person is very limited. Every person has the amount of שכל he has and the amount of feelings he has. Every person is limited. Every person has his capabilities, has his attributes, has the way he is. Other people are different. We have, Gemara says you have 600,000 people, that's one, just like you don't find two people who look alike, you don't find two people who think alike, you don't have two people who have the same מדות, the same feelings. So a person only has what he has. The moment you are part of the tzibbur, so number one, because you are part of this new entity, you, now as an individual who you are both, you are an individual and you are part of that tzibbur, and since you're part of one big entity where everyone takes place, so all the מעלות of all the other Yidden you also have. You gain. You have all these things. You are limited by yourself, but here you have what everybody else has, because it's all now one, more than a partnership, all one unit. Besides the point that בגשמיות, when you have a lot of people, each one helps each other. You're there, you help the other person, the other person helps you, you have your מעלה, the other person has their מעלה, and the third person has his מעלה, and you help each other. And when you have two people working together, not only do you have double, you could accomplish more. When two people work together, you could accomplish double. When two people work together, the Gemara says when it comes to pick up a weight, two people together, not only could pick up twice that one person could, I think the Gemara says eight times as much, because the strength is there more. The same thing when you have different people working, so it helps you out that other person helps you, and more than one person helps you, then you're able to work this out, and you get more כח to do more things. Now why am I bringing in this tzibbur? The tzibbur is a, in a big way the concept of tzibbur. We have the concept of tzibbur in a miniature form, and that's the family. The family unit is a small tzibbur within the big tzibbur, and whatever we find concerning the specialty of the tzibbur, of the community of Yidden, applies also to this miniature tzibbur which is the family. Just like we say by the tzibbur, the fact that you have a tzibbur, so it's the same tzibbur as it was before, the same thing works for family. It's not that if you have one family, you have parents and you have children, and then you have their family, so it's like a new family, it's not. Since they are part of a family, and then there is an addition, they start their own family, it's all one המשך. So it's not like you have changes that comes one after the other and it continues from one to another. Just like the tzibbur is one big tzibbur, you have every family that goes down, the descendant, the children are really part of this family, their children are part of their family, which they are part of this, of course, it's really one big family. Just like by the tzibbur there's one tzibbur in Klal Yisrael, we say ציבור לא מת, the family is the same. You have this continuity. And because of that, you don't have what they call a generation gap. A generation gap is when there is a separation between the older ones and the younger ones, and it's only natural to be a separation because the younger ones are young and young people have different outlook, and older people have a different outlook, and they can't match and there's no continuation, and therefore they change and that's how it goes on. But if you have the family unit, I'm talking about biruchniyut, it's not bagashmiyut, biruchniyut, it's not like they're new, they're all part of the same thing, so the unit continues and continues as one unit, and therefore the next generation is like the previous generation. Besides the fact that bagashmiyut, if you have the family, so you have the closeness between this of the next generation and the previous generation, so then there is no gap in between. When is there a gap? A gap is there when there is a break. So you don't communicate, you can't give over what you are to the next generation. But if you have the family unit and it's all one, so then you have this inyan of the hashpaah that you have from the parent and the children, and when there is this hashpaah, so they get what the parents are, and they continue in the same way. It's also important for the parents between themselves. When you have two individuals, two individuals, every individual is different. Especially let's take a male and female. The male has what a male is, what a man is, and the woman is what a woman is. Now, as much as we say the man is special, but he's lacking the maalot of the women. The woman is special, but she's lacking the maalot of the men. When you have the family unit, so just like by the tzibbur we said that each one helps the each other and you take one from another and therefore you gain much more than if you're yourself, so too when you have the family. So the man gets what the woman's maalah is, the woman gets the man's maalah is. And besides, when you have two people together working together as one unit, so the success is much stronger in whatever you will do, whether it's for yourself or your children, because together, each one helps each other, so you have a much stronger koach. It's like the Mitteler Rebbe said, he said you should always have a chaver, a friend to discuss your more most inner things, inner problems, and he said why? Because if you discuss it with a chaver, you have two yetzer tovs and one yetzer hara. And when the two yetzer tovs, two nefesh Elokits, fight with one nefesh habehemit, they'll win. And the question is asked obviously, you have two yetzer haras also, cuz each person has a yetzer hara. The answer is very simple: the yetzer haras don't work together, the yetzer tov does. The nefesh habehemit, I'll tell you in simple terms, the yetzer hara, my yetzer hara wants me to do aveirot. My yetzer hara is not interested that you should do aveirot. But my yetzer tov is good, and when it comes to good you care about somebody else, so my yetzer tov wants me to do mitzvot and him to do mitzvot. So what happens is we have two yetzer tovs, each two יצר טובs fighting one יצר הרע, and the other יצר הרע doesn't help cuz he doesn't care about this guy, he should do עבירות. Then the same two יצר טובs fight against the other one's one יצר הרע, so you have two יצר טובs against one יצר הרע. Now that is even when you have two friends. So when you have two friends, you're able to fight יצר הרע and you're able to accomplish much more than if you don't have a second friend. Now imagine if it's not just two friends. Imagine if you have two people who על פי הלכה become one unit. There's no הלכה that two friends become one משפחה, and they turn into one unit that's one. It's not! They still remain two friends. They can be as close as possible, but it's two separate individuals who become very close and they share their more inner feelings, etc., etc., but they're still two. A husband and a wife, על פי הלכה when they become one family, the פשט is now they're one unit. So they're two which turn into one. So you have the two יצר טובs, not two separate יצר טובs fighting over one יצר הרע, you have the two יצר טובs become one big יצר טוב! Because each one helps the other and together they're one, and they fight with the יצר הרע, they work together, so you can imagine what you can accomplish. So the same like we say in the tzibur as a whole, we have in the miniature concept of tzibur, we have this unit of a family which is very, which helps out one another, and that gives a person a lot more success. And that's סיי לגבי how to work for themselves, סיי לגבי the outside, לגבי the children, that if you work together as a family, so then if you work together as a family, so then the the the the chance for success is much stronger.

What I would like to do is go a little bit into details. We say that each one has his כחות, and each one has his מעלות, and each one has his specialty, but doesn't have the other one, and only if they work together, they can accomplish it. So let's take the מעלות of the father and the mother, or the husband and the wife, and let's discuss על פי תורה, על פי חסידות, what is the function or the מעלה that the father has, or let's say the husband has, and what is the מעלה that the wife has, and how together, and only together, only as a unit together, can they accomplish. Individually, as I will explain, individually they will not work. Because the מעלות, as I will explain, that each one has, if the person the one the number one will not take the מעלות of number two, and the number two the מעלות of number one, and put it together as a unit, it won't work. work. And that's why the unit is important. And let me explain this based on what the Gemara says. The Gemara says in Yevamot, someone asked a question, actually the question I think was asked by Eliyahu Hanavi, the Gemara says. It says in חומש that השם said to אדם הראשון, \"I'm going to make you an עזר כנגדו. I'm going to make you someone that will help against you.\" That's the literal translation. The translation really is, \"I'll give someone to help for you\", but the words are עזר כנגדו. And the Gemara says that it's possible to be עזר, and it's possible to be כנגדו. It's possible that a wife that the פסוק talks about, \"I'll give you a wife\", could be a help, and she, chas v'shalom, could be against him. But what does it mean the wife is a help? How does she help him? What does a wife do to help? That's what the Gemara says, asks. How does she help? Now, the women over here, what they do, because otherwise what do you mean, what they help? The question is what did, how did the husband help the wife? But what the Gemara says is, what does the word ezer mean? And the Gemara says, \"I'll give you an example.\" The example is a mashal, not a mashal, an example. The husband goes out into the field and works, and brings home חיטין, brings home wheat. Nu, go eat the wheat. Could you eat it? You can't eat the wheat. He brings it home, and the wife takes the wheat, prepares it, cooks it, and makes it edible. Another example: a man goes out and brings back skins. What can you do with skin? You have to have somebody to prepare it, make it into clothes, or bring wool, so you bring it, and the wife takes it, and she prepares it. And then the Gemara finishes with these words, ונמצא, it comes out, שהיא מאירה את עיניו, she lights up, shines up his eyes, ומעמידתו על רגליו, and she sets him on his feet. She sets him on his feet! What does this mean? This is the Gemara's explanation. It means like this: we have two people here. Each one has his function and mission basically based on his ability that the Torah gave him. The man's ability is to bring, as it would be called, the raw material. That means the ability of, if we're talking about a home, let's say, the ability of bringing the tone of the atmosphere and setting the tone for what the home is, how the home should be, what should be done. But how to do it, how to accomplish it, and how to develop it, that he can't do. That's not the כח of a man. That's the כח of a woman. A woman has this כח of taking what he brings, and taking and developing it, and making it edible, making it usable, בכלל, developing and bringing into that it should be able to be something that you could use. Actually, this is what the Gemara says, בינה יתירה ניתנה לאשה יותר מאיש. A woman has more binah than a man. Now we know, we have when it comes to seichel, there are three levels of seichel: chochmah, binah, and daas. The Gemara says on a woman, she has more binah. The Gemara doesn't say she has more chochmah, doesn't say she has more daas. She has chochmah. There's a פסוק, it says, חכמת נשים בנתה ביתה, the chochmah of a woman builds a home. We know she has daas. The Gemara says נשים דעתן קלות, says women have a very light daas. But binah she has more than the man. The man has more chochmah. Now, what is the difference between chochmah and binah? These are not just words. There's a difference between chochmah and binah. Chochmah, it says in חסידות, means, let's use an example of a person who's learning, and he's learning a sugya in a Gemara or whatever, and he doesn't understand, many things don't make sense. You sit down, you start thinking, and first you get that lightning of sechel. Oh, I got the point! I don't know yet how this will answer the questions, how it will explain it. I got the point! That's chochmah. That's what it says in Tanya, that's chochmah. Then you sit down and you take that nekudah, that point of sechel, and you start developing it, thinking about it and dwelling into it and looking in it. And you see, yeah, now after it's developed, it explains this point, it explains this point, and at the end you see everything makes sense. That's called binah. What does the Gemara say? The man has chochmah, and the woman has binah. The man has more chochmah than the woman, and the woman has more binah than the man. That means the man's koach is in chochmah, which is the nekudah. He's able to come and come up with the nekudah, come up with the point, and that's the יסוד, that's the foundation. And then the woman has the ability of developing it and applying it and bringing it down into mamash, to see how it could work out, to bring it down to mamash. Now, somebody is going to ask, which of these two is more important? No, there's no answer to, they're both important. The woman, she is the one that has this ability of taking it and developing, making a ה. This is a pshat in the Gemara. The Gemara says like this, as I mentioned before, איזו היא אשה כשרה, what is called a kosher fine woman? העושה רצון בעלה, that does the will of her husband. Now people think it means, see what the Torah says. Those that are for women's lib say you see, we always said that the Torah put the women down the second class citizens. She's like the slave. She's like the maid in the house. She has to do everything the husband tells her to do. That's not the pshat. The pshat is איזו היא אשה כשרה, העושה, she's able to do. The husband might have the ratzon, she might have the will, but he can't do it. איזו היא אשה כשרה, a real woman is osah, she does the רצון בעלה, the ratzon, the will of the husband. She does what the husband might want and have the proper will and proper nekudah of chochmah, but he can't do it, and she's the one that's able to do it. And only when the two work together as a family unit will accomplish. And the same is, as I mentioned before, legabei the children. When it comes to educate the children, now we know the woman is called עקרת הבית. She's the one that has the ikar. She has the koach, but it has to work in a partnership, in a unit of both. The husband sets the tone and what is right and, and she's able to apply it. And we find that as far as the Avos. By Avraham, by Yitzchak. What happened by Avraham? Avraham, Sarah was the one that understood how to educate Yitzchak. She saw that Yishmael around is not going to work, and she came to Avraham and he said, \"Avraham, get rid of Yishmael.\" Now, Avraham didn't not want. And what did Hashem say to Avraham? כל אשר תאמר אליך שרה שמע בקולה. Whatever Sarah will say, listen to her. And Rashi says, שמע בקול רוח הקודש שבה. Listen, she has ruach hakodesh. She understood how to educate Yitzchak and what's proper and what's not proper. By Yitzchak and Rivka, what do we find? From simple, pshat pshat, who had the more understanding in educating the children? So it says Yitzchak loved Esav, but Rivka, she loved Yaakov, and she understood more. Yitzchak wanted to give the brachot to Esav. Rivka understood that the brachot have to be given to Yaakov. So here, even by the avot and the imahot, we find that Yitzchak, Avraham and Yitzchak, when it comes to apply, who had more ruach hakodesh? And we're all talking, obviously, in very high levels. But in the high levels of the avot, who are the Who is the one that had this koach were the imahot more than the avot. Now it doesn't come, chas v'shalom, to knock the avot saying that they're missing. Because if not for the avot, the imahot would not be able to do what they do. You can't say one is more important than the other. We could say they're both equally important, and we could also say that one without the other is worthless. There has to be a family unit. It's like someone would say, what is more important, the heart or the brain? Without the brain you can't live, and without your heart you can't live. What's more important? No one could tell you what's more important. The brain has its function, and the heart has its function, and it's only together that you have a proper, healthy body. So you have to work as a unit. And actually, the family unit is like the body of the person. Together they make up to make up a a body to make up one mishpacha, and when you work together that's when one helps the other, but only if they work together. And both are just as important. Sometimes it says that the husband and the wife are k'neged the two Shabbos candles. We all know that's our minhag, by most people the minhag is that you light the amount of candles Shabbos as much as members of the family that you have. Now, when you just get married, a girl before she's married lights one candle. When she gets married, she lights two. Why two? Because herself, the husband and herself, two. It also says in Shulchan Aruch that why should you light two candles? One is for זכור את יום השבת לקדשו, one is for שמור. One is for remembering Shabbos, one is for guarding the Shabbos. It says in Kabbalah, זכור לדכורא ושמור לנוקבא. זכור is for the male and שמור is for the female. Now, someone will ask, out of the two Shabbos candles, which one is more important? The זכור one is more important or the שמור one? They're both equally important. How do you know they're both equally important? Because זכור ושמור בדיבור אחד נאמרו. When Hashem said עשרת הדיברות, what did He say? זכור את יום השבת or שמור? One place it says זכור, one place it says שמור. Why does it say one like this, one like this? Because they said, Hashem said it together. And the Gemara says, something that a human being can't say, it was impossible for us, but the Eibershter put it. Why? To show that זכור and שמור are really one. It's one unit, even though they're two separate. זכור is remember Shabbos and שמור is guard the Shabbos. One means Kiddush, one means not to do מלאכה, all kinds of different things, but together they make one. The same thing here is with the husband and the wife, it's together they make up the they make up this unit. And when we say the same thing, not only לגבי themselves, that for their own growth they're one, and that's noge'a is for the children also. It's for themselves, the Gemara says, כל מי שאין לו אשה אינו אדם. A person doesn't have a wife is not an אדם, not a person. Which means, not that he's missing something, he's not a person because it's only half. Two together are not two things together, two halves. It says in Zohar that the neshamah originally was one, and every one of the two is a פלג גופא, is half. The neshamah was originally one neshamah, got split in half, came down as two halves, and then they have to meet up again, and what happens to them? They become one again. It's not that two people meet and now you have two people together. The two people become one. The pasuk says this. The pasuk says ויברא אלקים, השם created זכר ונקבה ברא אותם, male and female He created them, ויקרא שמם אדם. He called their name אדם. Their name, together, is called one word, one name, אדם, because together they make up the unit. So they, for themselves, in order to accomplish the shleimus, if a person wants to reach his shleimus, his completion, he has to have his other half. In English, the expression is my better half. Yeah. It's the other half, and since every person should be an ענו, you consider it the better half. But together it makes up one unit, that's what that's what it is. That's לגבי themselves. The same thing is לגבי the children, that together they are able to educate the children. But the job of each one is, the job of the father is the נקודה, the point of bringing the point, and of the mother is the development. Because everything in גשמיות is a is a השתלשלות from רוחניות, in גשמיות it is like that. In גשמיות, the birth of the children, you have the father, the נקודה, and then you have the development of the child inside the mother. So the development is from the mother. The נקודה, that's the father. So you have the יו״ד and the ה״א in the גשמיותדיקע sense, and you have the כח of the people, and together they make up one unit. Because of that, there is another נקודה which is similar, that we find that there is a difference in structure of a man and a woman. And we're talking about a family structure, why we have to have them both together. A man, it says, which is not it says in ספרים, it is something that we can see, is more connected to שכל, and the women are more connected to מדות. Man is more connected to intellect, man is much more cold, doesn't have these emotions, and the woman is more emotional. Doesn't mean חס ושלום women are not intellectual, doesn't mean that men don't have emotions, but the most important, but we see the stress is by the man it's more the שכל, and by the woman it's more the מדות. Which is, by the way, the reason why you cannot have a woman part of סנהדרין, part of בית דין. Now some people use this, some women's groups use this against the Torah. Look, the Torah doesn't allow a woman to be a judge, oo-oo-oo. So the real The reason given is very simple, not because she's lower, is because when it comes to פסקן a דין, comes to give a a decision on הלכה whether a person is innocent or guilty, you have to פסקן based on the pure facts as it is intellectually. You can't mix in your emotions. You can't say, well, this person, we'll make him innocent because after all, it's a רחמנות of them, it's a pity, there's no such thing. If this person is guilty על פי הלכה, he has to be guilty. And the Torah was afraid that the women are too good. The women have these feelings, these emotions, and they're going to mix their emotions in. You have to have a minimum amount of emotion, normal emotion. That's why it says also certain people, even men cannot be judges. It says a person that doesn't have any children can't be a judge. And the reason is because he does not have emotions. Because when you have children, you develop feelings, you have to have feelings. There's a certain amount of feelings you have to have. But the women are more much more than needed for a הלכה. So, that's why she can't פסקן. But basically, what I'm trying to say is that the men are more to the שכל, the women are more to the מדות. And we have to have the combination of both. We have to have the combination of both. A person that will work purely with שכל and the מדות will not play a role, he's missing. He's missing על פי הלכה, he's missing a מענטשליכקייט, he's missing everything. Cuz שכל is fine, but you have to have the מדות. You have to have Even for mitzvot, you have to have אהבת השם, love to Hashem and fear of Hashem, you have to have the מדות. You can't just have שכל. On the other hand, if you can have only the שכל only the מדות, not the שכל, it won't work either. So, what do you do? If the שכל and the מדות turn into one big unit, then you have everything. So, the שכל of the man is משפיע, influence on the woman, the woman's מדות with the man, and together it's a unit. And what do the children have? You have יו״ד ק״י, which is the חכמה and בינה, or sometimes it says the שכל and the מדות, then the children that come out, they are influenced by a complete unit, so they have, as we would call, a well-balanced education in everything. And this is the importance of the family unit. Again, the importance is on one hand the רוחניותדיקע importance, because when you're a mishpacha, it's not It's like a tzibbur, a small tzibbur, that you're ממשיך the next family is the same family as before, just continued to other people, but it's a separate entity in a family. Plus the simple things that this makes that everything works out fine. You have the help of others, and you're able to accomplish.

Now, this is concerning human beings. We know that everything that we have בגשמיות, have we ברוחניות. We have a family also ברוחניות. What's the family ברוחניות? I don't mean family that we say down here we have a רוחניותדיקע family. You can have the Rebbe is considered part of the family, that's a רוחניותדיקע family and all. I'm talking about Hashem and the Yidden. Hashem is על פי תורה the husband, the Yidden are the wife, and together we're married. Hashem married us by Har Sinai, and He's stuck with us. He can't get rid of us, whether He likes it or not, He's stuck with us. Rabbeinu Gershom made a cherem that you can't marry a second wife, so He can't marry another nation, He is stuck with us. Rabbeinu Gershom said you can't divorce your wife by force, so He can't divorce us if we don't want, so He's stuck with us. So, He's our husband, we're the wife. And the what are the children? Well, the Gemara says, and Rashi brings, תולדותיהם של צדיקים, the children of צדיקים, which really means from all the Yidden, because עמך כולם צדיקים, all צדיקים, are מעשים טובים and mitzvot. Torah and mitzvot are the children. So, basically, what is the family? Just like we have a family, the father and mother and children, that's the family unit which is the structure that makes up a small tzibbur which is part of the big tzibbur of Klal Yisrael, we have the spiritual family: we have Hashem, the Yidden, and the Torah. And we know that תלת קשרין מתקשרין דא בדא, it says. There are three knots that are tied together, three things tied together: the Yidden and the Torah and השם, כולא חד, it's all one. So, it's all one big family unit. And when we stress and strengthen our own personal family unit, this strengthens the family unit ברוחניות, and the Eibershter, Hashem and the Yidden and the Torah become even more one. And when will it really be seen as one? Because now we're also one, but we don't see it. When Mashiach will come, it says, then we'll see The whole world will see this family. All the people will look at us and see this is one big, happy family: Hashem and the Yidden and the Torah, with Torah and mitzvot which is the which are the children, and then it will be בגילוי. So, by us doing it now, this brings it should be then, and that should be not then so please far, but very close, Bimheirah v'yameinu mamash. Yes. No questions, I guess. Everything is clear. Yes?

Question on the count. Going back to the beginning, you said when Hashem wanted a headcount, did they just count the mishpachot? Mishpachot. No, count the shevatim? How many in each shevet, and then the individuals that count You you count through the mishpachot. individual headcount or count the mishpachot? מש- mishpachah. Mishpachot. Mishpachot, yeah. So they counted this family, and this family has 20 people. So they wrote down 20. Right. But they counted individuals based on the by the families, right. Okay, go ahead. Oh, I thought it's Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Now they're the mother and the father. Right, right, but each one Right. Listen to this. No, no, because okay. Right! But since these two come from a family, so they What happens is they join two families now. So two families become one family. And that's how it happens. You become one and yeah yeah. Yes? See, daat daat Okay, go ahead, finish it. Daat is not really a separate level in understanding. Chochmah is the first step of understanding. Binah is the second, the development. Daat is only after you understand it fully to make sure that it penetrates into your mind, it seeps in, you have to have daat. So daat is not And that's why sometimes we don't even count daat as part of sechel, sometimes we count daat as part of middot. That's why that daat is made up of chesed and gevurah, which is middot. It says in the tefillin, we have on one side the three ש, the ש with three lines, and one ש with four lines. So it says, why do we have the ש? ש represents חכמה, בינה, דעת. Why four? Because חכמה, בינה, and דעת is divided into two, which is חסד and גבורה. Why חסד and גבורה? Because that's the ממוצע, the in-between חכמה and בינה, and and מדות. So really, דעת is not a level in itself in the development of שכל. חכמה is, and בינה is, and that's it. דעת is just to strengthen it, to bring it into yourself, to make it clearer in your mind. No, that's part of the that's the children. Like in י-ק-ו-ק, we have It says in Tanya, י-ק, י is חכמה, ה is בינה, ו are the six מדות. What happened to דעת? There's the same question there. The answer is part of the ו is דעת, part of it, and then the ה, which is מלכות. If there are no ch- כרת. I guess it I'm I'm just imagining that if there are no children and there's no המשך and there's nothing, probably it stops. That family stops. But if it continues, if there are children, I I imagine, I'm I can't say for sure. Yes? Yeah, but you're talking about a community like a shul, like a city community. We're talking about Klal Yisrael. If Klal Yisrael if everybody would get killed, there would be no tzibur, right? But that'll never happen, the מציאות will always continue. Okay. Okay. Good. Yes? Very few, and even then, for example, Devorah. So the mefarshim all ask the kushya, how could Devorah be a judge? It's against halacha. So the answer is what she did was, she looked into the halacha, but she wasn't the one to pas'ken. She had a man sitting there, and the man pas'kent. And she was smart, the man had to verify it with his koach. Now, lemaaseh, she happened to have חכמה, too. When we say that, let me just add this, this is a point an important point, that when we say men have the חכמה, women have the בינה, it doesn't mean that in certain individual cases, Hashem will give a woman chochmah, too, and in certain cases Hashem will give a man binah. For instance, what happens if chas veshalom, chas veshalom, there is a a single-parent family? That she her husband she's a widow, and she has to raise the children, and to raise the children, you have to have the chochmah and the binah. If she only has binah, what's she going to do? We know אין הקדוש ברוך הוא בא בטרוניא עם בריותיו, Hashem does not do things that people can't take. So therefore, in that specific case, we assume, I mean we trust in Hashem, that He will put into this woman, she will have extra koach of chochmah. Or sometimes when a man needs the binah, Hashem will put in. Also, some exception cases you have that there were women who were special, and they had chochmah, extra, like a man. But sometimes men had extra binah. So when you say by these judges, so על פי הלכה, there is a problem how these women judged, so it says clearly, they looked into it, but the הלכה פסוקה was not given by the woman, it was given by a man. But how did she even reach the decision? Because this woman obviously had chochmah, Hashem gave it, as an exception. You wanted to ask something? Related with it? The yetzer tov, is that part of the neshamah, or is that someone's? No, that's together. That's part of the נפש אלוקית. Yetzer tov and the neshamah go together, yes. It's part of it, yeah.