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Each year, on the yahrzeit of Reb Shlomo Carlebach zt”l, Rav Shlomo Katz gathers to sing, learn, and remember the light that Reb Shlomo brought into the world.
This collection brings together teachings and stories shared over the years — reflections on the soul of song, the power of love, and the endless invitation to come closer to Hashem through music and heart.
Revisit the melodies, Torah, and spirit of the man who taught us to believe in the holiness of every Jew, and to never stop singing.
Good morning, everyone. Obviously, the שיעור this morning is for the לעילוי נשמת of ר' שלמה בן ר' נפתלי. Today's ר' שלמה's 22nd יארצייט, and he passed away on a Thursday night, ערב שבת וירא. And from all the תורות that we have, from all the פרשיות, the ones on וירא are probably the longest.
And they cover, they cover so, so much, so many different, the first transcript I ever did was actually on, on this פרשה of his, וירא, and it completely changed the way I looked at every single story in the תורה. And I think anything we say about, about the, we've, we've learned so much of his תורות, anything we say about the personality, we see that it's really viewed through the mirror of how he understood השם's word, how he understood the תורה. The way he understood השם was the way he understood people. And that, that's a very deep thing.
It's one thing to keep the learning in the בית מדרש and then with people it's a different interaction. But then there's another thing is like to bring you, to bring the בית מדרש with you wherever you go, walking, a portable בית מדרש. And this is one of the pieces that is a very, it'll, it's, it's a little bit difficult. We've done this in the past, I think, I don't know if over here or on a Monday night, but it's in אבן שלמה as well.
And it's a beautiful take on a פשט which, I'm sure Avi, I'm sure you've noticed this as a, as a בעל קורא, but there's something very interesting, one of the פסוקים in our פרשה. Now we all know that this פרשה is, contains within it so much between the three guests coming to visit אברהם אבינו, לוט, סדום, as well as obviously the עקידה and, and so much more, but there's one פסוק that just on a פשט, very hard to understand what the פשט means. So look inside. It says, והשם פקד את שרה כאשר אמר.
And then it says, ויעש השם לשרה כאשר דיבר. So first of all, what is the word פקד mean?
והשם פקד את שרה. Does anyone know what the word פקד? He remembered her, right?
והשם פקד את שרה כאשר אמר, like he had, how would you say the word אמר? Said? Okay, so now I'm going to ask you, what does it mean ויעש השם לשרה כאשר דיבר? What does דיבר mean? Spoke. Spoke.
Okay, על פי פשט, what's the difference between saying and speaking? If you had to guess, what's the difference? What does it, what does it ring, what bells does it ring? Speaking, you're speaking to somebody. Or maybe you're speaking out loud, but you're speaking to somebody. Versus? Saying, you can say it to yourself. It's interesting, I was gonna say the other, exactly the opposite.
The opposite of that? That's fantastic. Okay. Two for one. And you drink properly.
Perspective. Saying versus speaking. You have anything? You ever, you ever noticed this in the פרשה? Saying is, you've said it a bunch of times now. It's always ראש השנה.
It's always the conclusion. Saying is almost like a conversation, two ways maybe, you know. Ah, so he's saying that's what Dov said, but... No, no, that's what Noach said.
I think I, I'm agreeing with him the more I think about it. Okay. Cause the speak, you flipped them. Okay, let's see, let's see inside.
If you translate it, it means that God remembered Sarah כאשר אמר, as he whispered. Now, how do we know that אמר means soft? So it says by ברכת כהנים, כה תברכו את בני ישראל אמור להם. And השם tells משה רבינו, tell אהרן and his sons this is how you should bless עם ישראל. And it says אמור להם, and רש"י says there, אמירה לשון רכה היא, that speaking is a, אמירה, לאמור is a, is a soft word.
It's a soft language. As opposed to, and God said to Sarah, כאשר דיבר, as he spoke.
דיבור is more, yeah, like speaking towards something. It's a bit more of a charge, yeah.
Whereas אמירה, לאמור, and now really you realize every time השם spoke to משה it was kind of whispering to him, right?
וידבר השם אל משה לאמור, and not וידבר השם אל משה לדבר. Right, but that has וידבר in there also. It begins off וידבר and it ends off לאמור. In the beginning, it might be, I need, I need your attention, but once I have your attention, that's גוואלד, huh? I never thought of that.
It begins off וידבר השם אל משה, gets his attention, okay now, now you're with me? Now לאמור. Now, now I'm gonna, now I'm gonna speak softly. That's good.
כל הכבוד.
כל הכבוד. Okay. Whispering and speaking. And here I wanna, I want you to listen to this איזביצער תורה which is beyond, this is a classic, fundamental principle in the world of איזביץ, and it's gonna be very hard for some of us to swallow this, but that's okay.
When the תורה uses the word אמר, it's as if God whispered when he spoke. Okay? When did God speak to Sarah? So when the angel came and said to Sarah, next year you're going to have a child. That was the speaking, so to speak, that Sarah received from השם. What is whispering all about? This is the deepest מי השילוח תורה.
First of all, it's got to be clear to us that when we pray, it's not that we pray and God answers; it's so much deeper than that. What really happens is that God prays and we answer.Okay. Let's open. Go for it.
Give me your best רש״י on what רב שלמה just said right now. What in the world does that mean? God's praying that we'll communicate with him, and us praying is the answer. So to whose prayer? To השם's prayer. So השם דאווענט, and when we end up coming into communication, that's a response to השם's whispering.
Isn't that like השיבנו השם ונעשובה but like תשובה, like to go back to השם?
תשובה, it's like I go back to השם because what? Because השם calls out for me. So it's a response. So it's a reaction. It's a react but okay, but how do we usually view דאווענען? The other way around.
Right, I דאווען and God responds. And here he's saying, no, מה פתאום, it's not true. We're דאווענען and we're wanting God, we're saying, hey. As a response to השם saying שובו אלי.
Like, come, okay, come back to me. Come back to me. That's what תפילה is. Like if you had a strong moment in this שחרית, it wasn't because you had enough guts to get up and say, okay I need you, and then השם says, okay, what do you need? It's more that something else was happening where השם was saying, don't you need me? Don't you need me? Yes, I do.
Yes, I do. And that and that's the way. Now, this is not just a nice ווארט here. It really does change the way we view תפילה.
Correct? It changes the way you view דאווענען. Again, what really happens is that God prays and we answer.Now listen to the most awesome thing in the world. How could Sarah, who is already 89 years old, still be praying for a baby? So here רב שלמה says, it's only because God was whispering into her into her ears, I want you to have a son. But it seems she doesn't know then that God's whispering in her ear.
Because what if you have to ask how is it possible an 89-year-old Sarah is still asking for the impossible, for a child, it's because God's, is it whispering in her ears or God's putting this thought? It's the same thing. In your mind. Same thing, same thing. She's responding to something else.
On her own, מצדה, on her own, why would you דאווען for something that seems that seems impossible?
היפלא מהשם דבר? Who says that?
השם says that. Right. So meaning he's saying, look, if if I could do anything, if I could do anything and you're hearing me and I'm active in your life, you're going to respond to my prayer. But רב שלמה is kind of saying, he's proving his point, not his point, the איזביצער's תורה is saying the reason why Sarah was able to pray for something that was so far out was not because it made sense to her.
It didn't make sense to her, but she was so tuned in to השם that she heard השם saying, are you are you דאווענען?
דאווען for this, I want you to be an אמא. I want you to be a mother. On a personal level, you'd have to really ask yourself what seems impossible to you in your life. And then try to see, do you hear השם saying to you, דאווען for this, I want you to have this.
Now I'm not I'm not talking about supernatural things like I would really love to fly and השם wants me to fly, so I should respond to השם's prayer. But things that seem impossible but that are truly possible within the realm of nature, for right now. What are the things that seem impossible? That mornings could be blissful in the house and that everyone just gets dressed very nicely and all breakfasts are made and everyone just like it's like a Brady Bunch morning in the house. For some people that seems like the impossible but maybe, you know, for it could be that השם is whispering, that's possible for you, דאווען for it.
And then when I'm דאווענען for שלום בית, I'm really responding to השם's prayer.Okay? It's געוואלדיג because I never thought of it this way. And you know, how, I'm asking this to myself now, how do you tune in to hear what השם is praying for? Yeah. Well, that's why... Everyone talks about this quieting your mind down and יישוב הדעת and in fact, according to the פיאסצנא רבי whose יארצייט was not this past שבת but the שבת before, his world of meditation was called השקטה.
That was actual something that he worked on with his students.
השקטה, which means quieting things down. You know sometimes you could use a ניגון to quiet down your mind, to quiet down your emotions. There are different techniques for this.
But when you do learn how to quiet, what however you learn how to do it, you do hear השם praying. Sounds like the way to tune in is like you said, when the thoughts you have when you're meditating or your dreams or aspirations are exactly what you've just described. That's השם whispering it to you. Right.
You could either say, wow, look what I came up with, I have such a good idea, or you could humble yourself and say like, wow, that's that's not even even that that's not really me. That's just receiving what's being whispered into me right now.It's I remember I had a רבי in in third grade in Los Angeles. His name was Rabbi Tropper. And he said that since הר סיני that if you really, really quiet yourself enough and you you really learn how to be quiet, you could still hear השם telling over to you the word אנכי or אנכי השם אלקיך, אשר הוצאתיך מארץ מצרים because we we learned that השם started talking to us and never stopped talking to us since that one.
What grade was it? So it was in third grade. I know. Very deep. Well, it also messed me up because I found my I remember that year closing myself in closets and or in bed at night, like just going like this trying to, trying to hear, and then getting very hard on myself and mad at myself that it wasn't happening.
But I don't think he meant that that you could still hear השם's voice saying עשרת הדברות. Here it means that you hear השם praying for you to daven for something. That never that that never stopped ever. Probably since השם told אברהם אבינו, לך לך.
That's a prayer.
השם's saying to אברהם אבינו לך לך is a prayer.
אברהם אבינו getting up and going is a response. How old were you when you were able to resolve that in your mind? I'll let you know.Now listen to okay.
והשם פקד את שרה כאשר אמר. It's even too awesome to utter. The deepest secret between God and Sarah was that God was constantly asking of her all the time to please pray for a child. Okay, what are the things, okay, this is this is crazy.
What's something right now that you wouldn't have the guts to pray for because it seems too, too wild for you? Anyone have? Not like flying like. So I'm saying again, as I said, it's not I said not supernatural although, having an 89-year-old woman give, right, right. like I want to be able to I want to be able to go to the I was going to say technology. Okay.
Why not? That's within the realm of possibility. Of course it is. Of course. People have tried to fly by the way on God's word.
Hasn't really worked out. Yeah, they've fallen off mountains and bridges, but.
היפלא מהשם דבר?
היפלא מהשם דבר.
שם can do anything.
Okay, but Dov brought up something very good. Dov's davening to the, to what? To build to be the contractor? To go to the. Wow, I I wasn't even okay. I took it I took השם's whispering to a higher level.
To be the contractor of the בית המקדש. You know I heard just to see it be rebuilt again. I heard there's a group of יידן that are actually approaching are approaching Trump to build the בית המקדש now? Where? In New York or? in Trump Tower.
היפלא מהשם דבר.
היפלא מהשם דבר. A lot of gold. Right. He would make שלמה המלך's building look like nothing, right? Make Mexico pay for it.
You know something?
היפלא מהשם דבר? No, I'm thinking about it like, think about who was the last person that built?
הורדוס, right? He makes Donald look like a חסידישע ייד or. Think about it. No really.
היפלא מהשם דבר? Right, but wait a second, back to Dov for a second.
Dreams. How about us building ourselves? Ah. I don't know why, that seems to you an irrelevant possible? That's what I said you asked about. Did you hear השם's whispering? I hear more than השם.
You hear other people too. You hear other people too. Are we responding to the prayers?
הלוואי. What did I just talk to you about before?
הלוואי.
Okay, look at this. Now now look at the bottom over here. This is beautiful. One of רב נחמן's biggest חסידים, his name was רבי אפרים.
He had a ספר called עונג שבת. I I finally got this ספר. I have it in my in my library. This רבי אפרים asked, asks what was, what the sin of Adam really was.
He says something unbelievable, like what was תכלית? You know, in all the ספרים, I've never saw a רבי that ever said, excuse me, that the sin of אדם הראשון was that he ate from the tree of knowledge. All the רבי'ס explain that the core of the sin was something else. Remember, בריסקר רב, רב נחמן explained, it's that he started hiding from God after he did something wrong. That was the real עבירה, hiding.
Some says that the way he communicated with חוה. That's a ברסלב approach. Yeah. That he hid from God.
That he hid from God after he ate. That was the sin. It's beautiful. It's painful, but it's beautiful.
'Cause that's where we are most of the time. We hide after we're doing something wrong, thinking, you know, that's really showing remorse. Okay. So the מכילתא, מכילתא דרבי שמעון בר יוחאי, chapter 33 says, איזו היא עבודה שבלב, ולעובדו בלבב שלם, זוהי תפילה.
What does it mean to serve God with your heart? When it comes to the service of the heart, we're always talking about prayer. It's simple.
איזו היא עבודה שבלב, זוהי תפילה. That's working.
Now by the way, that's a very, just on a פשט level, you know, when you come to a שול and you're not feeling it, what's wrong at that moment? You're forgetting that דאווענען is עבודה. You're not supposed to just feel it. You're supposed to work towards feeling it. Many people are under this assumption that they go to a שול, I don't connect so much.
But are you, are you in the process of עבודה? Are you working on yourself? But that's with everything in life. With what you feel, yeah. Marriage, yeah, everything. Yeah, work and marriage.
You know you can, you can be in a place where you walk in and just the way other people are דאווענען inspires you to connect. Yeah, I need... Well, no, not even more, but even more than that, you don't have to connect to anything to make money. You don't have to, you have to work.
Work, but that's a connection. That's putting in something. Connecting is, is actively doing something, right? No, you can, you can go through the motions and and maybe... Then you're not connecting.
Okay, but you're making, but but... but you're working. But you can reap more. But I'm saying it's all...
Could be. Just like you go to שול you could דאווען, but then you could get so much more from שול. You could, נכון. The same with everything.
No, but what, but what you were saying, who's just said this, when you walk into a שול... Yeah, there are some places. And you feel it or you don't feel it. Like I'll tell you, recently, I've been into שול'ס that sing every ניגון that I could dream of, right? But it's, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't talk to me.
Sometimes I'll go to a שול, maybe I'll go to a ספרדי מניין, like the other day we were by קובי, and his father was saying every word of פסוקי דזמרה. Yeah. Awesome. Flying.
He'd do the מזרח. Flying, there's an עבודה. I don't know what it is about it. It's just I got such a...
Well, on a שבת. It's something else. On a practical level, you know, that's, that's one of the reasons that short דאווענען'ס are so difficult, or a 30-minute דאווענען. You don't even have time to to work.
You're so busy catching up and saying the words the whole time, where, where's the, where's the time to even think for a second? Right. Uh, so they decided I'm not, I'm not gonna דאווען, I'm just gonna talk to השם, you know, which is a tradeoff, but... Right.
נכון.
But the point over here is that איזו היא עבודה שבלב, זוהי תפילה, that we have to understand that talking to השם and this whole thing, it's an עבודה. It's not if I feel it, then I know it's on. And if I don't feel it, it's off. Where are you working? Where's the עבודה? That's what, you know, פסוקי דזמרה is is a is a buildup of עבודה.
Some שול'ס, you know, the highest moment in שחרית is פסוקי. 'Cause you it's it's blood, sweat, and tears. It's saying, it's everything. It's such a בנין, you build that בנין so that when you get to ברכו, you go into a different place, it's more of התקשרות, then I'm connecting.
But you know, it's very hard to just start off the... I can't even tell you guys how many times this trip I sang the ניגון הריני מקבל עלי. So I spoke about this concept everywhere I went, about this ענין of how you start דאווענען. It's an עבודה, also with דביקות חברים.
You know, it's an עבודה. You look around the room and you say, 'Oh, I love everyone in here.' No.
הריני מקבל. I, I accept it upon myself that this is what I'm going to be working towards.
You don't say הריני אוהב כל כל כל מי שנמצא פה. You say הריני מקבל, I accept upon myself that this is, that this is עבודה. Okay, so now again, איזו היא עבודה שבלב, זוהי תפילה. Bottom paragraph.
So he says that when God said, so he says that when God says to Adam, "Don't eat from the tree of knowledge," Adam thought it was just a statement. Like many of us hear הלכות, we hear them as statements. This and not this. The saddest thing is that Adam couldn't imagine that God was really asking him to pray over what he just told him.
You understand that sentence? Not so much. Let's try and understand this.
השם's asking him to דאווען not to have the urge to eat from the tree? He's trying to, he's saying to him, are you going to דאווען to understand what I really just said right now? Meaning, when you want to tell someone something very strong that you love, so you don't want to just have to spell out for them every word that you say. You want to say something and you want them back to say what do you really mean? What do you really mean? And then once that that conversation begins, then it stops sounding like statements and it more it sounds like a very clear communication.
But that only happens through עבודה of what do you mean? Like we have a lot of, look, we're stuck in in our community today, in in the world community, there are core issues that we don't understand how they're they will ever be resolved within the framework of הלכה. So there's two ways of approaching it. One is what? That means that forget it. I'm not going to do any עבודה to try to understand what God meant because clearly it doesn't doesn't שטים.
Or, what could I do? I can start to ask השם, what do you really mean today in today's day and age? How, what is, how do you do this in a way that I don't have to that על דרך עבודה. Right? Like working on trying to understand what you mean, השם, in the framework of today. You can get caught in a very interesting place over here because you can either say forget the whole thing, I'm just going to become completely liberal or whatever, because I have to live with the times. But a איד is always saying, רב שלמה was saying a איד is always asking השם, what do you really mean? What do you really mean by by what you're saying? And I think that when you ask השם what do you really mean, then you start to hear השם's תפילה, then you start to hear the whispering.
But you have to show השם, I'm willing to do all the עבודה in the world in order to understand what wants השם.I'm willing to. Instead of why is this happening to me? Exactly. Or instead of it can't be that we're living in a different age, things have to change. Like if that's how you start, then forget it.
Then you're not going to hear השם's whispering and you're not going to understand what השם is really saying. But if you're saying it has to be, השם, that there's a way to understand what you want from me in today's day and age and I'm going to work on myself as hard as I can to hear your תפילה, then you have a chance. Then you have a chance of understanding how how to implement it in your life.The saddest thing is that Adam couldn't imagine that God was really asking him to pray over what he just told him. So what did Adam do? He basically said over to חוה a statement, God says not to eat it, right? Like like אדם told חוה not to eat.
But the way he told חוה is what did she hear? She heard a statement. She didn't hear השם whispering or praying anything to her. She just heard don't, don't, don't instead of let's let's understand what I'm all about.You know friends, God can make two million statements and I'm still not listening. There's only one way of me listening to God: if I ממש pray over it a million times.
Unless you sit there and you cry your eyes out, it just doesn't help. You think I know there is such a thing as שבת and that's it, גוואלד. You have to pray a million times so you can taste שבת.So the תורה says that God put אדם in גן עדן, what? to do what?
לעבדה ולשמרה, to work it, to have, now now we understand.
וינח השם in גן עדן לעבדה.
In גן עדן God was saying certain things, but the question is was there עבודה שבלב?
לעבדה ולשמרה, were you working on what you were hearing or not? Or were you just saying yes, yes, no, no. So ר' אפרים, the אוהב חיים on the פּסוק says that לעבדה means that God wants us to pray to him that we shouldn't that we simply shouldn't be able to eat all the wrong apples of the world. But you see the way Adam said it over to חוה was that he just made a statement to her. This is a very, this we we could speak a lot about this.
We don't have time right now but again to review this piece is that most people that get turned off of אידישקייט is because they hear statements being dictated towards them. So if we all, if all we heard was statements, even from השם himself, we wouldn't be interested in it. So many people that are willing to just chuck the whole תורה away, it's because they're just hearing statements. They don't understand that when God tells you something, איזו היא עבודה שבלב.
Now עבודה begins. Now it's work. Statements are also usually stronger and harsher than this. whispering.
Ah, וידבר. You know, nobody, look, when you sometimes a technique I've used in trying to close a deal instead of being hitting heads, is all of a sudden I'll speak so low the person can't almost hear me. And and it's calming and you can hear it different. It's not going to get us like, don't tell me what to do.
Right. So interesting. Don't tell. We don't want anyone to tell us what to do.
It's right. Even God. Right. We we but we say we believe in God, but don't tell me what to do.
But but it's how השם tells it. Right. Which is also how we look, I like that. So שרה אמנו knew that God was asking her to pray to have a baby.
She could have looked at her life and say, God gave made me a statement. What's what's the what what did he dictate to me? You're going to be barren for the rest of your life. And then there's no עבודה, there's no working on understanding what God wants of you. But she was always working on herself and inside, quieting things down till she reached the place where she heard השם whispering to her, you know, I do want you to have a baby.
I want you to דאַוונען for it. So רב שלמה is saying to us in all the things in our lives that seem very far and they seem very unreachable and seem impossible within the realm of nature, if you if you have עבודה, if you're דאַוונען is an עבודה, and if you're here in this world to realize I'm here to work on myself for real and to constantly be involved in wanting to grow and quieting my mind down, you will hear at the end of the day that which השם is asking you to really focus on and praying. And at the end, you'll have a the equivalent of, you know, an 89-year-old woman getting pregnant and having a child, if you quiet yourself enough in order to hear. It takes a lot.
It's a it's a very deep עבודה. Takes a lot, a lot, a lot, but at least we know that this is the way to understand now when we now when we go back to this פסוק again, look at the פסוק.
והשם פקד את שרה כאשר אמר. God remembered Sarah like he whispered to her, which means have a child, have a child.
She responds, I want to have I'm not giving up, I still want to have a baby.
ויעש השם לשרה כאשר דיבר. And then he answers whose תפילה? Really his own, if you think about it.
השם answers his own תפילה.
He wanted Sarah to דאַוונען, she ends up דאַוונען, so whose whose תפילה is he answering? His own. But she responds to her like he had said. Like he had said to her. Yeah.
Well, she responded to him. She was exactly. She responds to him and then he responds to her, which is really responding for yourself. You know, a חוצפה-dik way of of taking this and saying, God, why don't you just answer your own prayers already? Why do you even have to go through me, right? Just answer your own prayers, right? That's not what we're talking about.
Thank you השם for using me as this holy medium through which your prayers for the world could be manifested. That's the that's that's the highest. Thank you השם for using me as the צינור, as the conduit through which your dreams for for the world happen and take place. You know, every time רב שלמה wrote a ניגון, you we have this on on all these recordings, is that he he was almost in this wonder amazement while after he wrote the ניגון because he completely removed himself from the act of writing the ניגון.
He would turn to you and be like, wow, isn't that amazing? So if you didn't know him, you'd be like, what a בעל גאווה is this guy, right? But really what he's what he's saying is, isn't this look what השם just put into the world. And then it humbled the daylights out of him that השם chose him through it, through him to be that one to receive that melody. All right, יישר כוח לכולם.
שכוח, שכוח.