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The Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection is the one-stop shop for the Torah inspiration shared by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe in one simple feed. The Jewish Inspiration Podcast, Parsha Review Podcast, Thinking Talmudist Podcast, Living Jewishly Podcast and Unboxing Judaism Podcast all in one convenient place. Enjoy!
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
And now, my friends, day number 191 in the Yor HaSedikim, the Ways of the Righteous, in the Treasure for Life edition. We're in Gate, the Gate of Fear of Heaven on page 989 on the bottom. We see, we behold, our eyes behold the greatness and glory of man. That the Creator of all raised and uplifted him above all creatures and gave him dominion over all the lower world creations.
Hashem gave us the ability. It's a big mistake if you think, anyone who thinks, that we're here to serve the animals. No, the animals are here to serve us. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't have respect for them. We're not allowed to cause them pain. We also have to honor them. We have to feed them before ourselves. This is biblical. We have to feed our animals before we feed ourselves. You have a dog, you must feed your dog before you feed yourself.
You have a cat, you have to feed your cat before you feed yourself. You have fish, you have to feed them before you feed yourself. But it doesn't make them more prominent than you. You still have to know, just because a parent is best friends with their child, doesn't mean that they're equals. They're not equals. A child will always be obligated to honor their parents. We can't relate all that man does in the lower world. Our mouth lacks the power to relate all that.
He says, you know, even though your body ends up just like the animals in the earth, we're all buried, we all die one day, and we're all passed on from this world, but our soul doesn't. Our soul lives on. Even though human bodies, even the tallest of us, is really not big. We're not very big, big creatures. Your soul is broader and greater than all of the earth and all of the heavens. The soul says that before a baby is born, what does it do? It learns Torah.
It's able to see from one side of the world to the other. Why? Because it's a neshama. The neshama is so great, it spans all of the universe and beyond. And then, when we're born, that very, very awesome, mighty, holy, lofty neshama gets sucked into this body. And then you wonder, when a baby is born, it cries. Why does it cry? Because it doesn't want to be here. It doesn't want to be here. You're locking me. I was in a world of open understanding of Hashem,
and now I'm in a world with confusion, where I have eyes that show me things, where I'm looking around and I'm confused. What's going on around me? And since everything is understood to the mind, just like you can't fit the vast water of the oceans into a small little container, you can't fit all of the wisdom into the neshama, into the mind. When a person is filling his neshama in this world, and now it overflows into the world to come, why does Hashem create all this?
The only reason Hashem gave us such an incredible life to live is to learn to serve Him with a perfect heart. When a person recognizes all the miracles and greatness of Hashem, then he sees, one second, look at a sunrise and tell me you're not in awe. Look at a sunset and tell me you're not in awe. Look at the heavens and the earth. Look at the galaxies. Look at the stars and the moon, the sun. Look at all of the planets, how they operate in perfection.
Look at the human body and see its perfection. And you're telling me you can't see the hand of Hashem? You see Hashem everywhere. You're able to contemplate that that's the neshama seeing that and saying, if so, I have to control my body with my neshama. Because it's lower, but not only because it's lower, because it's a distraction, we need our body to be subordinate to our soul. All of these insights that you see in the greatness of Hashem's creation, they're all the neshama's purview.
The neshama sees it, the body doesn't. Because the neshama controls the body. Just like one who has a saddle on his horse and he has the reins in his hand, he's in control. Are you the horse? No, but you're controlling the horse. And you can make it turn right, you can make it turn left, you can make it stop, you can make it run fast. He says, so too is the neshama. Therefore we see that the person who's riding is in charge.
That's what the neshama needs to be. The neshama needs to be riding the body. Telling the body, go here, don't go here. Look at that, don't look at that. The neshama needs to be the one riding the horse. And the horse is the body. We see that the neshama is the main purpose of this world and the body is just the vehicle to transport the neshama. Just so we understand this. Our sages teach us, we learn this from the Torah,
that after this world we have a world to come. The world of souls, but then there's a resurrection of the dead. What's the resurrection of the dead? That's when the body and the soul reunite. When the body and the soul reunite. So the neshama asked, I don't understand, God, why do you have this plan? See, it doesn't make any sense. I was the one who did the good. The body wanted to run to the bar. I told him, let's go learn at the torch class.
So who should get the reward? What does the body have to do with it? The body was trying to get him to run and do terrible things. I was trying to get him to do good things. In the morning when he had to wake up, the body answers, the body says, who jumped out of bed? I jumped out of bed. When he had to do the acts of kindness, I had to do the acts of kindness. Yes, you were the inspiration, but I did the work.
I deserve reward as well. Hashem says, fine, there will be a unity of the body and the soul once more where you both get the reward. You both get the reward, and that's the unification that comes with olam haba, with the world to come and the resurrection. So people always ask, we know there's the concept of reincarnation. So in that case, which body goes with which soul? So I always say the prettiest one, whichever was the prettiest body.
But maybe not, because the prettiest one probably got carried away. So maybe it's not the prettiest one. Maybe it's the holiest one, the one that brought you to your greatest fulfillment of your role in this world. Okay. Okay. Woe to those who pull the soul after their body, not the body after the soul. And they take the most important and make it the least important. And every person can understand. ... He says, look at the world we're living in.
Everyone understands that since the higher world, the sun, the moon, the stars, serve the lower, certainly it is not for the enjoyment of the body, which is the lowest of the lowest. For there is nothing to the body it is only dust, worm, and maggots, prepared for affliction and ready for death. Whereas the sun, the moon, and the stars are pure and clear. How could it be then that such great things should serve the short-lived? So why is it? ... ...
He says, no. He says, no, why the heavenly realms, the sun, the moon, the stars, you know why they were created? Not for the body. For the soul. Ah, because the soul is so elevated. Now we can see that the whole world was created for me. The sun, the moon, the stars was created for me. All of the elevated realms created for me, but not for my body, for my soul. All of them so that we recognize
if the sun is so great and it's serving me, the moon is so great it's serving me, the stars are so great they serve me, the universe is so great and it serves me. They're a microcosm of Hashem. They're a micro-nothing of Hashem. They're creations of Hashem, obviously. But all of it is to recognize that Hashem is behind it all. So we see the body, it's not the body, all of these heavenly realms weren't created for the body.
They were created only for the soul. So if a person takes all of these pleasures of the world and does not use it for holiness, that's a contradiction to all of God's creation. You hear this, Mark? It's a frightening thing. That means we are obligated to take all of the good that Hashem created in this world to elevate us, to elevate ourselves and to elevate the world around us and to bring as much godliness into it because it's Hashem's world.
The body goes back to the earth. The body is short-term. The soul is eternal. And therefore, it's so important for us to always recognize that we have a massive, massive responsibility. This concludes day number 191. Thank you, my dear friends.
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