Malchiyos

The Rav Zichrono L'vracha used to quote that Rav Chaim was of the opinion that in the chasima of the bracha of Kedushas Hayom, whether in Kiddush, whether in Arvis, Shacharis, and Mincha, not only in Mussaf, the phrase מלך על כל הארץ is me'akev. Not only in Mussaf when we say Malchuyos is the מלך על כל הארץ me'akev, but it's also me'akev, it's also me'akev in all the other occasions, Kiddush and the other tefillos as well. Not all poskim agree with that opinion of Rav Chaim, and Rav Chaim's reason was because Malchuyos isn't just a theme of the Rosh Hashanah Shmoneh Esrei, but Malchuyos is the Kedushas Hayom of Rosh Hashanah, is the dominant feature of the Kedushas Hayom of Rosh Hashanah, and hence מלך על כל הארץ is me'akev. This hagdara of the Kedushas Hayom is dramatized by the shita of the Baal Hama'or. This shita is a da'as yachid, but what it dramatizes according to Rav Chaim is just basic and fundamental to understanding Rosh Hashanah l'chol hadeios. The Baal Hama'or at the end of Rosh Hashanah has an opinion that he says that really m'ikar hadin you're supposed to say nine brachos not only in the Mussaf Shmoneh Esrei but in every Shmoneh Esrei on Rosh Hashanah. He says that the simple reading of the lashon of the Gemara in Brachos when the Gemara says

הני שבע דשבתא כנגד מי הני שמונה עשרה דחול כנגד מי והני תשע דראש השנה כנגד מי.

The Gemara doesn't say הני תשע דמוספי ראש השנה כנגד מי but הני תשע דראש השנה כנגד מי, that Malchuyos, Zichronos, and Shofros, the Baal Hama'or says really m'ikar hadin we should say in every Shmoneh Esrei, we should say it Arvis, Shacharis, Mussaf, and Mincha. Again clearly because it's not just a theme which we digress to talk about in the Mussaf Shmoneh Esrei, but it informs, it defines the Kedushas Hayom. So let's, we spoke a little bit last week be'ezras Hashem about Malchuyos, and let's try a little bit more to review some of the various components and aspects of Malchuyos. The Mishnah in Rosh Hashanah with which we're all familiar on lamed-vav amud-beis, which has the machlokes Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri and Rabbi Akiva as to whether or not Malchuyos is integrated. Rabbi Akiva says as we do of course into the fourth bracha, Kedushas Hayom. Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri says no, it's integrated into the third bracha, into Kedushas Hashem. So the Rav used to say that the Uvchein's that we say in the expanded bracha of Kedushas Hashem was Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri's hakdama to Malchuyos. The same way when we say Malchuyos we have a hakdama to Malchuyos, Aleinu, Al Kein Nekaveh, that's our hakdama to the pesukei Malchuyos where we talk about the theme of Malchuyos. So that Uvchein's was Rabbi Yochanan ben Nuri's hakdama to Malchuyos. That was the Rav's suggestion. So we can therefore use it to help reconstruct and to help identify what some of the features, what some of the aspects of Malchuyos are. The Gemara has a lashon that מלכותא דארעא כעין מלכותא דרקיעא. That in some ways, as is the case with the entire bria, that what we see in Olam Hazeh and in the physical world is a reflection of a ultimate ruchniusdike reality, so there are certain features of Malchus Shamayim that we can understand by seeing a reflection of them, a pale reflection of them, in human malchus, in malchusa d'ara. So in the U'vecheins, so we begin right away with

ובכן תן פחדך ה' אלקינו על כל מעשיך ואימתך על כל מה שבראת

veyira'ucha kol hama'asim. So the most, well, a very basic, perhaps the most basic aspect and experience of Malchiyos, so in Malchus d'ara, so the Gemara darshans שום תשים עליך מלך שתהא אימתו עליך that what defines the melech and what defines our attitude towards the melech is a sense of eimah, a sense of fear and awe. And hence in when we try to say the Psukei Malchiyos so that HaKadosh Baruch Hu should allow us to experience the Kedei shetamlichuni aleichem, so clearly a central element and a central motif is that sense of eimah vafachad. It's interesting last week in a different context we were talking about the parallels between Shabbos and Rosh Hashana. The Ba'al HaTurim, I think perhaps we spoke about this two years ago, the Ba'al HaTurim says on the first word in the Torah in Bereishis bara Elokim, he says that if you rearrange the osiyos of Bereishis, so the osiyos of Bereishis are the letters of Yarei Shabbos. The Yerushalmi has a concept of eimas Shabbos. The Yerushalmi says that what happens if you have demai? So demai of course miderabbanan there's a chiyuv to be mafrish ma'aseros, but you can't be mafrish trumos u'ma'aseros on Shabbos. So what happens if you forgot to be mafrish from demai before Shabbos? So the Yerushalmi says even though on Sunday through Friday you can't ask the am ha'aretz because the whole point is that the am ha'aretz is chashud on ma'aseros, on Shabbos you can ask him and you can rely on his assurance that he was mafrish ma'aseros. Why? The Yerushalmi says because eimas Shabbos alav. There's a notion of eimas Shabbos. What's the source of the eimas Shabbos? What's the source of it? Same thing, because as we were discussing last week Shabbos also is in again a different sense than Rosh Hashana, but Shabbos also is a day of malchus. Where there's malchus there has to be eimah because שום תשים עליך מלך שתהא אימתו עליך. In U'vecheins we continue with ובכן תן כבוד ה' לעמך. How does this, how is this a part of Malchiyos? So lichora in two senses. Sense number one, the Gemara in Rosh Hashana quotes from when it tells us about the shir that the Levi'im would say in Mikdash every day, so

בראשון היו אומרים לה' הארץ ומלואה על שם שקנה והקנה ושלט בעולם. בשני היו אומרים גדול ה' ומהולל מאד,

right? We'll see in a minute the Gemara means for us to remember or to look up the end of the pasuk,

בעיר אלקינו הר קדשו על שם שחילק מעשיו ומלך עליהן.

So the shir shel yom of each day reflects what happened on that day during sheishes yemei bereishis. So what happened during sheishes yemei bereishis in Yom Sheini? HaKadosh Baruch Hu said yehi rakia ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים. HaKadosh Baruch Hu introduced separation, havdala, demarcation, delineation, havdala. And malach aleihen. Rabbeinu Chananel spells out the parallel to what the kapitel of

גדול ה' ומהולל מאד על שם שחילק מעשיו שנאמר ויבדל בין מים למים כך חילק הקדוש ברוך הוא ובחר בירושלים ונקראת עיר אלוקינו ושכינתו בה.

It's possible that the omek hapshat here is that chilek maasav and malach aleihen is not two different things, but rather one of the expressions of malchus is the prerogative of bechirah, right? כי מי יאמר לך מה תעשה? One of the prerogatives, if you have again, מלכותא דארעא כעין מלכותא דרקיעא, if you have an absolute monarch, so no one's in a position to ask, to question what the absolute monarch does. So havdalah, bechirah, is an expression of malchus because that's the again, that's the the sole prerogative of of the melech. With this in mind, you can understand something which I think otherwise is very, very tamuah. We just finished davening Maariv, so the first of the birchos krias shema,

אשר בדברו מעריב ערבים בחכמה פותח שערים ובתבונה משנה עתים.

So what's the whole, what's the whole bracha about? The whole bracha is about the again, delineation between yom and layla and how Hakadosh Baruch Hu is המבדיל בין יום ובין לילה. What's the so what do we have samuch l'chasima which sort of summarizes or which encapsulates the bracha? א-ל חי וקיים תמיד ימלוך עלינו לעולם ועד. What's that got to do with the rest of the bracha? Is that total a total non-sequitur? Ella mah, so lidvareinu, no, the whole bracha is about havdalah. Havdalah, bechirah, is an expression, is a reflection of malchiyos. So we ask Hakadosh Baruch Hu, the same way your malchus is reflected in the havdalah between yom and layla, המבדיל יום ומביא לילה? No, I don't want that it should be equinox, that it should be 12-hour day, 12-hour night. It's Hakadosh Baruch Hu's call. The same way that havdalah reflects malchus shamayim, so too Ribono Shel Olam, may your malchus shamayim be expressed and reflected in other ways as well. א-ל חי וקיים תמיד ימלוך עלינו לעולם ועד. So mimeila as part of malchiyos, we talk about bechiras Yisrael. Bechiras Yisrael is also an expression, a reflection of malchus shamayim. Hence, not only do we say as part of our bakasha for the realization and recognition of malchus, not only do we say v'chein ten pachdecha, but also וכן תן כבוד ה' לעמך. We have the bakasha of

וכל הרשעה כולה כעשן תכלה, ותמלוך אתה הוא ה' אלקינו מהרה לבדך.

So let's just elaborate, not that it's difficult to begin with, but let's just elaborate the theme of malchiyos which is expressed here. The Gemara in Rosh Hashanah also has a machlokes רבי יהודה ורבי יוסי when talking about which pesukim in the Chumash qualify as pesukei malchiyos. So the Gemara says when the Gemara is searching for where do we have a fourth pasuk in Chumash which could qualify as malchiyos, so the Gemara says

תא שמע שמע ישראל ה' אלקינו ה' אחד מלכות דברי רבי יוסי.

Rabbi Yehuda omer

רבי יהודה אומר אינה מלכות. וידעת היום והשבת אל לבבך כי השם הוא האלקים אין עוד מלכות דברי רבי יוסי.

Rabbi Yehuda omer

רבי יהודה אומר אינה מלכות. אתה הראת לדעת כי השם הוא האלקים אין עוד מלבדו מלכות דברי רבי יוסי.

Rabbi Yehuda omer רבי יהודה אומר אינה מלכות. So what's with the shita of Rabbi Yehuda? Rabbi Yehuda is so literal. He can't understand that there's an idea of malchus which is being expressed even if you don't find the word. So there's more than one answer, more than one correct answer to this question. At the moment, we're only going to suggest one. The Gemara in Megilla reconstructs by darshining the pesukim an exchange between David and Avigail. After David asks for supplies from Navall, and Navall very insultingly denies that request, so the Gemara reconstructs that David HaMelech was poised to go kill him because David HaMelech held that Navall was a mored b'malchus because he had already been nimshach by Shmuel and therefore he held that Navall had a din of a mored b'malchus. Avigail tells him. So David HaMelech ta'ans מורד במלכות ולא צריך למידני, that since he's a mored b'malchus, I don't need a gemar din from the Sanhedrin so I can do it at night as well. So אמר לה עדיין שאול קיים ולא יצא טיבך בעולם. v'lo yatza tivcha the same lashon as matbe'a, right? Your what when kings would ascend the throne, so they used to issue new coins and that was sort of a reflection of their of their sovereignty, of their consolidation of power. So Avigail is telling David HaMelech, it's true that you're nimshach, but Navall doesn't have a din of mored b'malchus because לא יצא טיבך בעולם. To have a full shem melech, it has to be that the malchus is projected. It has to be that not just that de jure, by virtue of the meshicha David was nimshach as a melech, but that malchus has to be projected. And Avigail ta'ans to him that that's not yet the case with you. The Rogatchover once just, digress a minute, once said that Rav Velvel commented to him bein gavra l'gavra during krias HaTorah in Parshas Shoftim. If you look at the parshas melech in Parshas Shoftim, so the Torah has the various special mitzvos which pertain to a melech:

לא ירבה לו נשים לא ירבה לו סוסים לא ירבה לו כסף וזהב.

And then the Torah interpolates the pasuk והיה כשבתו על כסא ממלכתו and then וכתב לו את משנה התורה הזאת על ספר. So what's this v'hayah k'shivto? Just go. You told me all the issurim the melech has and now introduce us to the mitzvah the melech has. So Rav Velvel I think referenced this Gemara in Megilla. There's also a Yerushalmi which I think he mentioned at the time. The Yerushalmi asks, right, the Torah tells us there's a special korban for a nasi, a melech, when he has occasion to bring a chatas. So the Torah has different dinim for the nasi than it has for stam a hedyot. So the Yerushalmi asks the question, what was David HaMelech's status while he was running away from Avshalom? During that period when David wasn't sitting securely on his throne, so he was still melech, but the Yerushalmi you see clearly from the Yerushalmi that he didn't have a full shem melech, the same idea as the Gemara here in Megilla because לא יצא טיבך בעולם. So malchus means gilluy. It means it's projected. It means it's nikar. And the very lashon of malchus expresses that, it expresses again that there's a giluy of the malchus, not just that legally al pi din he's a melech, but it's yatza tivo ba'olam. Itachen, again, there are other answers for this as well, when Rabbi Yehuda said that you have to have that word melech, because Rabbi Yehuda says yeah, the other psukim state facts, but not necessarily emphasizing the giluy or the projection of that fact. And part of malchiyos, again, is to, again, betoras bakasha at any rate, or in terms of psukim, to affirm again that there's a projection of malchus, because that's an indispensable feature of malchus, and hence part of malchiyos has to include a bakasha that there should be a giluy, that there should be a projection, that there should be, again, מלכותא דארעא כעין מלכותא דרקיעא, that there should be a projection of this malchiyos. There is more of an omek to that idea than we just said, and let's try a little bit to understand that. The Gemara's lashon of מלכותא דארעא כעין מלכותא דרקיעא notwithstanding, obviously, the mashal and the metaphor only goes so far. Malchusa de'ara means that the person is shalit vesofet. The Rambam says the lashon Hilchos Melachim, that the melech is the lev ha'am. When we talk about Hakadosh Baruch Hu being melech, it means much more than that. It doesn't only mean Hakadosh Baruch Hu is sovereign, that Hakadosh Baruch Hu rules absolutely. It also means that ein od milvado. The psukim, again, which Rabbi Yosi says express malchiyos, the word melech, the absence of the word melech notwithstanding, so each of these psukim of ata horeisa lada'as and וידעת היום אין עוד, that's what Hashem echad means also. So malchiyos means not only that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is melech, shalit vesofet, but it means

וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך כי ה' הוא האלהים בשמים ממעל ועל הארץ מתחת אין עוד,

doesn't only mean that ein od melech, but it means ein od. That Hakadosh Baruch Hu exists, everything else exists through him. That's part of the notion of what malchus means. Now let's try to halt kop, rabosai. So what happens in Aleinu? So after we quote veyadata hayom, we then say על כן נקוה לך ה' אלהינו. What's the hemshech? So the hemshech is as follows: Once we recognize that ein od milvado, so that means that the only thing which is real, if the only thing which is real is Hashem, then the only thing which is real in the world, as opposed to being a mirage, as opposed to being illusory, is that which reflects kovod shamayim.

כל מה שברא הקדוש ברוך הוא בעולמו לא בראו אלא לכבודו.

If ein od milvado, let's try to hold kopf here, rabosai. If ein od milvado, so then the only thing... I guess, משל למה הדבר דומה. Let's say someone comes in and he's, rachmana litzlan, been hallucinating. And he never knows when he sees something whether it's real, whether it's not real. Is it an illusion or is it reality? So when he walks into a room, if he wants to check himself, so we'll tell him when you walk into this room, the only thing in this room are people, bookcases, and sefarim. That's it. If you see anything other than that, you should know that it's, it's an illusion. You're hallucinating. It's some kind of smoke screen because that's all that's really in the room. Ein od milvado. Everything in the world is for kvod Shamayim. When we look around and don't see that, we're not seeing ultimate reality. So ve-yadata hayom, we say it in Aleinu,

וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך כי ה' הוא האלקים בשמים ממעל ועל הארץ מתחת אין עוד.

But when I look around, I see so much which seems to be the antithesis of, of kvod Shamayim. It's not real. How can it be? I want to see the reality. I want to see the truth.

על כן נקוה לך ה' אלקינו לראות מהרה בתפארת עזך

because then we'll be seeing the ein od. There is an amazing, amazing passage in the Smak, in the Sefer Mitzvos Koton, which is oft quoted. The Gemara in Shabbos lamed-aleph says of the questions that a person is asked le-atid lavo, he's asked tsipisa liyeshua. The Smak says, what's the makor in the Torah that a person has to be metzapeh liyeshua? What's the makor? The Smak's question. The Smak writes as follows. This is in the mitzvah of anokhi in the Smak.

לידע שאותו שברא שמים וארץ הוא לבדו מושל מעלה ומטה ובד' רוחות כדכתיב אנכי ה' אלקיך וגו' וכתיב וידעת היום. ובזה תלוי מה שאמרו חכמים ששואלין לאדם לאחר מיתה בשעת דינו צפית לישועה. והיכן כתיב מצוה זו אלא שמע מינה בזה תלוי שכשם שיש לנו להאמין שהוציאנו ממצרים דכתיב אנכי ה' אלקיך על כרחן מאחר שהוא דבור הכי קאמר. כשם שאני רוצה שתאמינו בי שאני הוצאתי אתכם כך אני רוצה שתאמינו בי שאני ה' אלקיכם ואני עתיד לקבץ אתכם ולהושיעכם.

So according to what we've been discussing, so how beautiful what, what the Smak says is. Again, what does the Smak say? That the makor for the chiyuv tsipisa liyeshua is contained in anokhi Hashem elokekha. So what's the pshat? The pshat is like this. If anokhi Hashem elokekha, everything ultimately ein od milvado, anokhi Hashem elokekha, and everything ultimately is a reflection of that fact. So that means that a person has to believe if, so eventually, eventually the, the illusion has to be, has to be dispelled. And that's why emunah in Hakadosh Barukh Hu, because it means ein od milvado, contains within it the chiyuv of tsipisa liyeshua. So when we talk about that a feature of Malkhuyos is the yatzu tivo ba-olam, and... It's not only that we're mispallel, that part of malchus on Rosh Hashanah is to be mispallel that Hakadosh Baruch Hu's sovereignty should be recognized and should be felt, that He's shaltet v'shofet. No. What the ultimate malchus is, that the reality is, that ein od milvado, and that everything in the world was created to allow us to glimpse and be a part of kvod shamayim, so the ultimate gilluy of malchus is that, that revelation of לתקן עולם במלכות שדי. Now what that then suggests in that, it's apparent on a simple level without anything we discussed, but it takes on added meaning and added significance is that the relationship between teshuva and malchus. Last week we basically approached it from the vantage point of malchus, explaining how malchus is teshuva. That's basically what we discussed last week. In light of what we're discussing now, so what emerges is that teshuva is malchus, dehainu, the ultimate realization, expression of malchus again is when the reality of

כל מה שברא הקדוש ברוך הוא בעולמו לא בראו אלא לכבודו,

that ein od milvado, when that reality will be recognized, will be discerned, לתקן עולם במלכות שדי. When a person does teshuva, it means he takes a small part of the world, himself, and לתקן עולם במלכות שדי. So the same way malchus is teshuva, teshuva is malchus, because ultimately again what malchus is לתקן עולם במלכות שדי, a person does teshuva, so one little piece, but a very important one of the world, an olam katan of the macrocosm, a person is mesaken b'malchus shakai. So halevai we should be zoiche to אמרו לפני מלכיות כדי שתמליכוני עליכם. A gutt yohr, ksiva v'chasima tova.