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Rav Shlomo Katz explores the teachings of Rav Shlomo Carlebach zt"l on the Parsha with the sefer Even Shlomo
You're so disciplined and quiet today. What's going on? We're all just excited. You're all just turning in to the light of today, the light of רב שלמה's 31st יארצייט. Okay, let's sing a little bit.לעולם לא אשכח פקודיך.
לעולם לא אשכח פקודיך.
כי בם חייתני.
חייתני. כי בם חייתני.
חייתני.Now, this week, this last week, I think I found like nine new רב שלמה ניגונים because I just delved into the archive a bit more than usual. And literally, I just I found so many new songs, it's ridiculous, it's just ridiculous. These, these ניגונים were mainly from, from the House of Love and Prayer in the years '67 to '76, ממש כזה. Every, every ניגון is, I'll teach you one of them.
Okay, it's ממש כזה, I don't remember it exactly, but I think I'm pretty close. Try. Okay. So we're going to we're going to continue learning.
לעילוי נשמת בתיה פייגא בת ישראל, לעילוי נשמת לוי בן יוסף, and for the רפואה שלמה of עליזה חנה בת נעמי, שושנה יונה בת אידל, and a big רפואה שלמה for חילה בת אילנה.
חילה בת אילנה, please everyone have that name in mind. A very close, very good, an amazing person that needs a a strong רפואה שלמה right now. So, חבר'ה, just a very sweet תורה today.
A short, sweet תורה from רב שלמה.And I was saying the whole week that this this year, the way it comes out is the same when he was when he passed away.
רב שלמה passed away on a Thursday night in פרשת וירא. Passed away on the plane. It's a famous story.
He was going from New York to Toronto. And he was sitting and singing, he actually was in the middle of singing a ניגון that he only would sing on תשעה באב. He never sang it other than תשעה באב. It's an old חסידישע ניגון, it's a Skulener ניגון.
חסדי השם כי לא תמנו, כי לא כלו רחמיו. We've sung it before. And when he got to the high part, חסדי השם כי לא תמנו, כי לא כלו רחמיו.
חסדי השם כי...
and that's when he had a stroke and they brought the plane back. 69 years old.You know what's crazy is that, אנו ימינו כצל עובר. Our days are like a passing shadow, but the days itself could be very long. So even though it's like a passing shadow, the day itself can be very, very long.
When a person loves, their days their days are much longer. When a person's heart is open, they have אורך ימים. Not long, because he didn't have long אורך ימים, he didn't live a long life. He didn't live a long life, lived a very short life.
So how how could it be that so much was done in such a short amount of time? Because he loved.
פשוט. When you love like that, your when your heart is open like that, the day could last forever. There's נצחיות in a day.
There's ממש נצחיות in a day. There's eternity in one simple day.So in the light, in the merit of the light that's coming down on this day, this, you know, 31 years, I want to give us all a ברכה that we should love, like as cheesy as that may sound to some of you, but that's like the deepest thing in the world, that we could actually be people that love and that our days are filled and infused with ממש with with real love, then our days will also be very long, but we should also be זוכה to have חיים ארוכים. We should have a long life, בעזרת השם, very, very long life.And someone asked me this week, so tell me something, what what is רב שלמה for you? And it's like the weirdest question because I don't understand anything in my life without him, especially, you know, רב שלמה is my שדכן. I met בינה because of because of רב שלמה.
You know, my children coming to the world is started through that זכות of him and and seeing, I I only know any of you because of him. I wouldn't know anyone here. Even you I wouldn't know. I only came to the ישיבה there in Ramat Gan because of him, right? Everything, every person in this room, everything that's in my life, besides obviously the parents and the siblings השם chose to place in me, but how he's also been משפיע on my parents' life and on my siblings.
I think my brother's into רב שלמה a little bit too. It's a very, very beautiful thing. It's an amazing, beautiful light that I hope and pray that בעזרת השם he's משפיע שפע רב on all of עם ישראל. Earlier this week, I had an out-of-body experience.
Not because of anything substance-free. Oh, some substance. There wasn't, I was, maybe it was contact. but there was substance-free as far as I know, because I was in Caesarea, and some of the חברה here were in we're in Caesarea different nights, the last, this last week.
חנן had his shows there. And when he played השבנו in Caesarea, and then he, how on the recording, he he has Reb Shlomo starting to talk there, and all of Caesarea is in a trance of השבנו השם אליך, and then Reb Shlomo starts talking about how freedom is a gift from heaven, only God can give it to you. And once God gives it to you, you could never take it away. I want to tell you a little bit about how that came about.
Before פסח, I think, he asked me to send him some some תורות on on פסח. So I have a lot of them now translated into Hebrew. The Israeli חברה are the biggest Shlomo freaks. These guys, how long was מנחה there yesterday? I showed up at 8:00, thinking I missed it all, and they were at שמע קולנו in the.
At what? At at 8:00? 8:00 p.m. They started מנחה at 4:45 and they ended at 10:00. These guys are, they put those hippies to shame in terms of מסירות נפש and everything. These guys are, this is a whole young חברה, they call me every day. They text me every day, all these kids, every single day, I'm not kidding.
So anyway, that's why the תורה first really through Hebrew it's gonna, that's what's really gonna change change the next, the next שלב. So, I sent him, I must have sent him like two or three teachings, short teachings on on פסח. And one of the teachings really, really spoke to him. So he asked me, can you send me the recording of this in in English? Can you send me the recording of it? I said, yeah, but it's in English.
And the piece I sent him was maybe three minutes of a teaching. I sent him the whole thing, about 40 minutes of it. And then he surprised me one day in the studio, he found another the piece of audio months later. Months later, he took that, some of those words that shook his to the core and placed it into the track that is now hundreds of thousands of people are listening to.
But the out-of-body experience was was that Reb Shlomo loved, he opened his heart while he was teaching Torah in 1977 in New York. Who knows what's gonna get to where?
כמעט 50 years later, someone gets turned on because their heart's open and they love. And then hundreds of thousands of people are then continuing to receive because one man was courageous enough to love. What, מיכל שפירא?
מיכל שפירא, you know מיכל שפירא, right?
בם בם בם בם, right? Him.
I should have said, I should say, נאי דיי דיי דיי דיי, right?
מיכל שפירא. Right after Reb Shlomo passed, he was close to Reb Shlomo. Right after Reb Shlomo passed away, he said, I have this on tape. He says on tape, I have this on an MP3 file, that the greatest thing he could say about Reb Shlomo was that he was a man of courage.
He was the most courageous man he ever met. Why? Because to be able to love like that takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of courage. We are walking around all day long with infinite amount of מחסומים, all the time.
They're they're already built in, sealed with nails in it. We already walk around with these with these, how do you say מחסום? A barrier. A barriers. Barriers.
Veils. And then there's sometimes there are people that just aren't. They just aren't. And they have to work so hard on themselves in order in until they get to there.
So you never ever know that when you're what's the result of a moment of courage coming through love, coming through תלמוד תורה, you never know when and where and how big it's going to explode into the world. You פשוט never ever know these things. So that's why I want to give us a ברכה today to have courage to love. And if we don't know what that means, to ask השם.
And if we don't know what that still what that means, to discuss it with a חבר. To discuss it with a חבר, to speak about it, say, hey, do you also walk around with these barriers and thinking that no one really knows who you are and and then you don't know anybody? And I think that if there's if there's a place that's really that's really suitable for for this עבודה to take place, then it's here in שירת דוד. You have a place for it. You actually have a place for it.
All the other stuff that goes on, you actually have a place. So I want us to make. of the most of it, take advantage of it.
שלמה, take it, grab a chair from the בית מדרש, a few chairs if you don't mind.
Thank you. Okay, so today's piece is a piece we, I'm sure many of you have seen over the years of learning אבן שלמה. A short piece based on רב נתן, based on ליקוטי הלכות from רב נתן. And over here, what רב שלמה is going to be doing to us is taking us to the heart of the name יצחק.
Why is יצחק's name יצחק, and what does it actually mean? The question is, did you ever have a moment in your life where you just started cracking up because you couldn't believe that something could actually be? Did it ever happen to you? So everyone thinks that the פשט is that שרה אמנו started laughing and she thought that everyone would laugh because they wouldn't because they couldn't believe, they wouldn't be able to believe that at that age she she could give birth. That's nice. That's פשט. But leave it to him to go through רמז, דרש and סוד through, through, through this piece.
Very, very short.
לעילוי נשמת רב שלמה בן רב נפתלי, זכותו יגן עלינו ועל כל עם ישראל אמן.
ברוך אתה ה' אלוקינו מלך העולם שהכל נהיה בדברו.
אמן.Okay.
I think there's about, I made like 30, it's not a lot of חבר'ה today, so maybe one or two have to, קיבלתם? You guys got over here? Okay. As I always asked, don't read ahead. Not because I want you to, I I want to surprise you, but I actually want to learn this together, שלב by שלב. This is a תורה of רב נתן in ליקוטי הלכות, הלכות שבת.
By the way, it took a few years to find this, and I'll tell you why, because I changed the word here. Because he said this is a תורה from רב נחמן. Because he would do that a lot when he would teach רב נתן, because it actually is true, but you can't find the source in רב נחמן. So after about two years, we then said, wait a second, maybe it's in ליקוטי הלכות.
So then we then we went to ליקוטי הלכות and found it there. It was it was a wild journey.
רב נתן asks why is it that when יצחק was born it says כל השומע יצחק לי? Anybody who hears of the birth was laughing and was ממש filled with joy. What what what is the what is the inner reason behind this? There have always been thousands of babies born every day, also the day that יצחק was born.
You could say that in a certain way, יצחק was better, maybe he was cuter, but that the whole world should start to laugh, that doesn't make sense. What was so special about him? So this is what רב נתן says, I want you to open your hearts.There are two ways of reaching קדושה. One way, by consciously working on it very hard. This is a level of קדושה I can gain or I can lose.
Each time I do a מצוה, I get a little bit holier, and each time I make a mistake, I get a little less holy. That's true, that's one level. And this has to do more with the בחירה, the choices I make in my life.
חבר'ה, out of the text, look at me.
I know there's a יצר הרע to keep on running when you know English. Trust me. I could just send this to you in an email, you could do it at home, but trust me, it's the it's the biggest פיספוס, trust me. Because if we believe, if we if we breathe this in and believe this, it's a completely different experience of going through this world.
There is a קדושה, there's a קדושה that's באמת תלוי on how hard I work. It depends on how good I am or how bad I am, and based on that, it goes up and it goes down. This more is what רב נחמן refers to as to have בקיאות, to be בקי ברצוא, בקי בשוב. You have to have בקיאות, you have to know how to get up.
You have to know how to walk, you have to know how to fall, and you have to know how to get up. That's a real thing. We're not, we're not discrediting it. Like each of us has to work on that every single day.
The fact that you came here on a Friday morning, regardless of whatever's going on in your life, and you chose to דאווען and you chose to learn, you chose to be with חבר'ה, that means that that place of קדושה in us, that place is is getting stronger. That's getting stronger, that's being accelerated. And that's a very real world of קדושה that we're constantly working on all the time. However, that's just half of the story.
There's a completely different story going on as well. You could call it now the נפש אלוקית, you could call it the פינטעלע ייד, there's a lot of different ways you could call it, but or just the just how he's going to present it to us. But then there's another kind of קדושה which has nothing to do with how much I work on it or not. It's the kind of קדושה God gave me when I was born, which is untouchable.
Untouchable. You can't touch it. No one can touch it. It's there.
It's always there. It was always there and it will always be there. It's a קדושה. It's not just a nice thing, it's a holiness.
You look around this room, each person here has it מחמת היבראם. That means just by the mere fact that you exist, you have this next level of קדושה. The other, the first level of קדושה, you don't necessarily have it because you because you're alive, because maybe you buried it. Maybe you maybe you forgot about it.
Maybe you neglected it. This second thing is משהו אחר לגמרי. It can be hidden, completely covered with dirt and filth, but it's the kind of קדושה that no one can take away from me. Even my own actions can't take it away from me.
I can do everything wrong in my whole life, but the inside remains so holy.Now, that's beautiful to believe about ourselves, but you know it's so hard when you see someone that acts like such a שוואנץ, that's like such a, you know, such a בהמה גסה, that that really has taken on, you know, all the whatever. I'm going to stop now because there's a lot, the heart, listen, the heart is wide open, so therefore you don't know, you have to Yehuda, you could kick me. You could, you know me, you could kick me if I'm if I'm going to go a little bit off, but you see people, you wonder like, like רבונו של עולם, were you sure about this one? You know? Is it, that was a תקלה? You know, was this kind of, something got messed up in the in the in the in the, you know, יצור, in the in the manufacturing of the souls going into bodies. This seems like much more kangaroo material or or, you know, I don't know what.
And and and the whole עבודה is, is that you have enough courage to love that person so that you could see this second level of קדושה, but much more importantly, that they could see it. That they could see it. Because it exists. I have to first of all believe that it exists.
Not just that I love them because it's a מצוה, כל ישראל ערבים זה לזה.
הריני מקבל עלי מצוות עשה, okay, it's a מצוות עשה to love, so I'm going to love. That's a nice, that's a nice שטארק way of approaching the תורה. But to actually believe that this second קדושה exists within every person that you meet, every ייד that you meet, that takes a lot of courage.
Because we've been let down so much in life. We've been disappointed so often, and it scares the daylights, it scares us. And we're just like, you know what? For the sake of my safety, I'm sure you're fine, you're געוואלד. Stay, stay far away.
You could still have stuff, you could still have some people stay far away, but don't believe for one second that because you're keeping them away from you, that they don't have this second type of קדושה.And I'm talking about the people that everyone's so fast to call them ערב רב today. That's been the greatest like הנאה people have today, last few years. The whole like, we've spoken about this. Everyone became a מומחה in declaring who's ערב רב.
This whole עולם is ערב רב. That חבר'ה is ערב רב. Those people that go to that הפגנה, they must be ערב רב. And then you're left with like two מנינים of people that aren't ערב רב.
And usually, they sound and look just like you. And then you have to stop for a second and be like, is that really what I've been doing? Yes. Yes. You don't think someone that does things that seem completely contradictory to what you believe to be right doesn't have this קדושה, אלא מה? It's covered, covered in filth.
You know, there was a, he's still alive. I'm not going to mention his name because most of you have heard of him, a very, very big philanthropist. I believe he's still alive. And he, ר' שלמה was מקרב, he brought him into the fold, he brought him into יהדות.
And eventually, he left ר' שלמה. He couldn't stay, he couldn't, it wasn't for, he said it wasn't, something wasn't wasn't flowing for him. So, they asked him once, why did you, why did you leave? So, he said, because I was basically at a place that I needed him to tell me exactly what to do in life, and he was never telling me exactly what to do. He was just speaking like in in broader terms, right? Now, the guy also left יהדות to a certain extent, even though he's very involved in.
a lot of very important Jewish-ish, דגש on the ish projects, and I found a video that I always wanted to send him. I didn't have enough courage. Maybe this יארצייט will give him courage and then maybe we can finish the שול. I don't know.
We'll see. We'll see. I need שליח עזות דקדושה for these things. So, the video, in the video, רב שלמה was asked what's your שיטה? What's your שיטה when it comes to people, to the youth and everything? And he says, I'm very big on never telling anybody what to do.
He says this. Why? He says, 'cause most kids ran away from the worlds of families and schools that told them exactly what they to do. They don't need me to tell them also what to do. But I believe, he said, that in their נשמה, they all know what to do, and all I'm trying to do is to connect them to that place inside of them that already knows what to do.
So I was thinking about that because when you have access to the type of קדושה that you're born with, right? That's the place that knows exactly what to do in life. And the real צדיקים, like there was a sign outside the בית מדרש in Mezritch by the מגיד. We've learned this many times. The sign was basically saying, I'm just going to paraphrase, that we're not here to teach you anything you don't really you don't know already, we're just here to connect you to the place that knows, that that does know.
That's that's connecting to the second level of קדושה. Inherent קדושה that no one can touch, no one can take away from you.Okay, so back inside, third to bottom paragraph. So רב נתן says the most amazing thing, most unbelievable thing. Until יצחק was born, the only way to become holy was by was by working hard.
It was the first level of קדושה. Until יצחק was born, till the first Jewish baby was born, if someone was holy, אלה תולדות נח, נח איש צדיק. Why? Because he worked on it. And anytime there's righteousness until יצחק אבינו is coming into the world, the קדושה emanated from a place of עבודה, of work.Again, until יצחק was born, the only way to become holy was by working hard.
But you know what יצחק brought down to the world?
יצחק brought down to the world that you're born holy. Because until יצחק was born, babies came, they were cute and everything, but there was no inherent קדושה just because they exist. It was all dependent on how much they how much they worked, which is a very western concept of measuring success, right? Measuring success. When this was revealed in the world that you're born holy, the whole world suddenly began laughing.
Something happened to the world, that from now on children are born holy. What could you do besides break out in laughter? That's why I asked before, these moments of you have this הארה of something and you're just like you can't believe it's true, but you see it to be real, you start you you start cracking up. You just start laughing. This is what the ענין was, כל השומע יצחק לי.
Anyone that hears that a baby isn't born to a 90-year-old woman, that's one level. That's פשט.
סוד, or סוד probably, I'd say, is that what? That you're born, it wasn't about שרה giving birth to יצחק. It was about who יצחק was and what he brought to the world.
That children are born with קדושה.He's going to explain how this works. You see what it is, אברהם worked himself up to such a level of קדושה that when יצחק was born, he inherited all his קדושה from אברהם אבינו, that even if he didn't do anything yet, he was already holy. But the but this is the this is the key. What produced this second level of קדושה? But can you imagine how much holiness work and prayer אברהם and שרה had to do? Can now you understand, can you imagine why it took so long to have a son like יצחק? Now we understand why.So this is the, you have to understand something, חברה.
What he's saying in this paragraph, the רבי'ס would say it would take them sometimes 20 pages to say. I'm not kidding. So open your heart and listen to these words. Can you imagine why it took so long to have a son like יצחק? What was the ענין that it took אברהם אבינו a hundred years, שרה אמנו ninety years? Let's say they were married for how many years.
They didn't get married in their late, had a שידוך crisis in mid-30s, they finally decided, I'm gonna. This is probably much younger. It's irrelevant, the age though. Why did it take so long? Because he says here, to have a little baby that will work himself up later on in life and eventually reach God, for that you don't have to wait 100 years and pray so much.
But to bring down a baby who will bring this holiness into the world, it took 100 years.The whole ענין of the לידה, of the birth of the first Jew had to be two people that worked so hard on which level of קדושה? The first because they didn't have the second.
אברם and שרה, as holy as they were, they weren't born as אידן, but they were the two people that worked the most on themselves than any two human beings did in the first 2,000 years of the world. They worked on themselves so hard through many different ways that the תורה alludes to us. They worked themselves so hard בין אדם למקום and בין אדם לחברו, non-stop day and night, day and night, till what? Till they produced something that's called יצחק.
Because it's too deep to fathom that a baby, like we were learning by the, by by רב, who which ספר was by the women's שיעור? Who was it? The בלבבי, no?
רב שוורץ, רב איתמר שוורץ, said one of the פלאות of the world is that mature, like very responsible, older and mature and successful people will get such הנאה, such enjoyment and laughter and and שמחה by looking at a גוש חומר, a גוש of חומר, a clump of bones and limbs that's done nothing in the world other than keep us up at night and and have us change diapers. They're not even smiling at you at that age, right? And yet what? It brings out something so big. Why? Because subconsciously when you look at a Jewish baby, you had a ברית, you had a שמחת בת. By the way, מזל טוב, Aymor Abramchik had a baby girl in the middle of the night.
Yeah.
ברוך השם, more and more children. So you look at it, it it brings out something in you, you don't, you're not even aware, you can't even believe that it's like this. And the real ones give the utmost כבוד to children.One of the times last, last week someone asked me, when did רב שלמה ever get mad? So there were like two or three times that that there was like בשיטה things he he would get mad.
He would get mad when people would talk during זמירות at the שבת table. That was like a יהרג ואל יעבור. If someone was hitting his child, famous story, stairway in the LaRomme in Bal Hotel where he saw a father hitting his son. That was a wild scene.
When people were hitting children, that that he had no, one time on a מושב, he heard that someone was hitting their child. Wow, my God. And then the third time was of course when a missionary would come into the room and try doing his thing. He, that's the recordings where you hear him screaming, freaking out, and you and you think it's not him.
נכון? You think it's not him. He starts cursing the guy. Damn you! Screaming. That button, that אידישע.
But then there was this other time that when you didn't give כבוד to children, there was a ברית. It was a ברית of my dear friends, the Fadermans. And while the baby was being brought or maybe right after, but they're all in שול, the סנדק's there, the מוהל's there, the parents are there, and they're singing ניגונים, but some חבר'ה, oh I haven't seen you in a while, שלום עליכם and it was. And he stopped and he said, he said, חבר'ה, I only judge people based on how much כבוד they give to babies and to children.
That's the only, only based on that is how I judge people.What other rabbi speaks like that? What other, what other person talks like that? And he was serious. I have the, I could send you the video. Serious like it's יום כיפור in the עילא. Right? Now, maybe you could say because what he's really meaning, what when he says I judge people based on how much כבוד they give to children means I judge people based on how much they give כבוד to the second type of קדושה.
To the second type of קדושה. So when we go home and we see our children, we see ourselves, we see whoever it is, it's a תיקון of all תיקונים if the second type of קדושה is something we דאווען to השם, not just to be connected to more and more and realize about ourselves so that we could cut ourselves slack of self-persecution, but also that when I look at people, the second type of קדושה is what I see first. And then the second type of קדושה, sorry, the first type of קדושה is perhaps what I pay attention to second. If that's the order of things, we're good.
We're we're like we're we're really good.
כן יהי רצון ונאמר אמן. Good job.