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This Jewish Inspiration Podcast is dedicated to learning, understanding and enhancing our relationship with Hashem by working on improving our G-d given soul traits and aspiring to reflect His holy name each and every day. The goal is for each listener to hear something inspirational with each episode that will enhance their life.
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
And now my dear friends, day 157 in the Yor HaSedikim, in the Treasure for Life edition of The Ways of the Righteous, in the Gate of Repentance, page number 850. ומאהוסם עשם וארבע דברים יש חמישה. And of those 24 things, there's another 5 things. That a person who does these actions will be more and more enticed to do it again and again.
And it's very difficult for a person to distance himself from these negative traits. What are they? A person has to be extremely cautious not to do these sins or these actions because they gravitate us towards them. And it's very difficult to move away from them. And they're all very bad habits. What are they? Anybody know what rechilus is? Tailbearing. You're saying something about another person. Okay, that is, well right, but let me explain what rechilus is. Rechilus is, imagine this, okay. So Mark, you're going to say something
about Scott, okay. You said, hey, do you know Scott, this and that, okay. I go to Scott and I say to Scott, I say, Scott, do you know what Mark was saying about you? Mark was saying about you. Now, where does it come from? Rachel is a peddler. Rachel is a peddler. What does a peddler do? He goes from one to the other, to the other, to the other. He tries to sell, hey, you want to
buy this 25 cents? You want to buy this 25 cents? That's what a peddler does. This person is a peddler of negative news. He tells you, oh, you know, so-and-so was talking about you. They said about this and that. Who said what? Who said, right? So what happens? Now you don't want to talk to him. You never spoke to him before, but now you know for sure you don't want to talk to him. He said something about me, right? I once had a story like this. Someone called me. Someone
called me from out of town, and they said, I'm coming in for a wedding. Can you do me a favor? Can you find out if the wedding is going to have kosher food? I said, sure, fine, no problem. So I called up the HKA. I said, I just want to know. Someone called me from out of town. They want to know, this and this wedding, is it going to be HKA certified? I just want to know so I
could tell the guy, right? It's very innocent. We all understand this. That's what we're supposed to do, right? So they said, oh, yeah, we have that wedding on this and this date, and this and this hall. Yes, we're going to be certifying the kosher food for that event. OK, I called the person back, and that was it. The family who made that wedding, I didn't know who they were at the time. A few years later, I was at some event, and I see them, and I said,
hey, how are you? Nice to meet you. And they were very, very nasty to me. I was like, what? I didn't even have interaction with these people, really. Why are they so nasty? So their child said, oh, my parents don't like you. I said, why? What did I do? I have no idea. You questioned their kosher, right? You questioned whether or not they were kosher. I'm like, I never questioned anything. Someone called me, and you were doubting whether or not they were
kosher. I'm like, I have no idea. Someone called me. I just had to verify with that. I didn't know who the people were even. But in their mind, why? Because someone said, oh, someone called to ask if you were doing it. Someone called us. And it was innocent, I'm sure. But when you talk about other people, it always could be misinterpreted. It can always be misconstrued. It can always be negatively twisted. Because for whatever reason, you were doubting whether or not we were going to
do a kosher event, or you thought we were. And you think about it. It's like, what? How did someone get to that conclusion? But they did. The rule is, don't talk about other people. That's the rule. You talk about other people, something's going to go wrong, guaranteed. So Rachelus is one. When you talk about somebody and telling him that somebody spoke about you. So now what are you supposed to do, right? Lashon Hara. What's Lashon Hara? Lashon Hara is speaking negatively about
another person. So I go to Mark, and I say, hey, Mark, you want to know something about Scott, let me tell you something about him. Right? So that's pure Lashon Hara. And that's when it's true. So he says, number one is someone who has anger issues. Number four, so number one was tailbearing. Number two was slander. Number three was anger. Number four, harboring evil thoughts. And number five, association with the wicked. You hang around with bad people, what's going to happen?
You end up doing bad things. Right? So you learn from their actions, and then it has a negative influence. It's one of the big challenges of raising good, healthy children, is what do you do with classmates? What if they have a classmate who has foul language? What if they have a classmate who has issues with whatever it may be? And now your child in class with them is being exposed to things you don't want them exposed to, per se. So you have to be, I said this story in
the past, but my parents moved from Brooklyn to Muncie because they felt that I was in an environment of bad influence. And it was having an effect. Now, not on all children does it have an effect. And not all families have the ability to move a hundred miles to be away from such things. And again, we're not saying to run away from your problems. But again, you can't expect a child who is being influenced to not be influenced when that is the influence around them.
Okay? V'husha Amar Shlomo, this is what King Solomon says, And the companion of fools will grow wicked. It's the reality. When you're around people who do negative things, you become negative as well. All of these things that we mentioned and the similar things to them. Although they deter repentance, they don't prevent it. Unless a person does teshuv of them from these actions. If a person does repent from this, then he is considered what we call a bal teshuv,
someone who is a penitent and he has a portion in the world to come. Sins, when we talk about sins, there's two different types of sins. One sin is the kind of sin that's between us and G-d. So if a person eats something he shouldn't have eaten, he thinks something he shouldn't have thought, not about another person, between him and G-d. These are things between a man and G-d. If a person doesn't fulfill the mitzvah of tefillin properly or the mitzvah of tzitzis,
phylacteries or fringes, the mitzvah of sukkah or lulav and esrog, these are not between man and another man. It's not interpersonal, these are between us and G-d. The second form of sin is the sin between man and man. So if imagine, if someone failed to do a mitzvah, now you have the opportunity to do the mitzvah. You didn't perform a mitzvah, so now do it. You didn't do an act of kindness, so now do it. Once
you do, you realize it, so now you can go ahead and do it. Don't miss an opportunity to do the mitzvah of loving-kindness. The im of our mitzvah is saying if a person did transgress and do a forbidden prohibition of the Torah, so if a person ate something he shouldn't have eaten, the Torah says not to eat it, and I ate it, I was tempted, I'm sorry G-d. A person should now resolve within themselves not to do that again and to do whatever they can to avoid falling into
that challenge again. Here is the general idea when we talk about the gate of repentance. Someone who wants to do real teshuvah has to be a warrior and you're going to have to fight. You know what the fight is going to be? I'll tell you what the fight is going to be. Scott, you correct me if I'm wrong. You're going to have family members going to say, really? So you can't come to
us now? So you mean you can't drive to us on Shabbos? What do you mean our house is not kosher? What do you mean you can't kiss me anymore to his female cousin? What do you mean you can't do this? What do you mean you can't do that? Oh, you suddenly became so religious. Oh, wow. And sometimes it can become almost offensive the way one is treated because they're just fulfilling the will of G-d, which is very amazing because what do you mean you have to
go to menchah? You got to go pray. What do you like? You think you're some rabbi? Suddenly you're going to go pray? Oh, so holy. But when they see someone who's Muslim bowing down at times square, they're like, oh, the dedication, the commitment is so beautiful to see that. The religion means so much to them. But if G-d forbid it's a Jew, oh, so intolerant. And that's what we have to realize. A bal teshuvah, someone who's a penitent, is on
such a high level because of all the challenges they need to face. It's going to be a big, big war in one's heart. And it's not as easy as the world thinks it is. So he says that people don't realize, people think like, oh, you know, only the big sins need repentance, but small sins don't. Small sins, that's not a big deal. That's not a big deal. The big sins, the cardinal sins, that's a big, big thing. And that's not the case.
For example, if someone is intending to agonize someone or to annoy somebody by causing them monetary loss, by provoking them in court, just giving them, what do they call those false cases that they bring? Where's our lawyer, Bruce? What is it called? I'm not talking about in the government. Malicious prosecution is another thing, or they call it, what? They're just like, they're just people who just sue people randomly, like frivolous, right? They bring these frivolous lawsuits, right? Thank you. All of those. Oh, I agree with all of
them. So all of these things are, you know, it's like, well, hey, if we succeed, maybe they'll pay me off to just get me off their back. You're causing pain, you're causing damage to another person. That, some people say, oh, that's real theft, that's robbery, okay? Such things, not realizing that this is robbery. Or the man who makes his fellow man take an oath, even lawfully, in which case he incurs punishment for this, which the Talmud brings.
And many times people can amount, amass an enormous amount of sins like these. We know that a person has to make blessings every day. We've mentioned this yesterday, a hundred blessings, a hundred blessings. And when we recite a blessing, we have to have focus. We have to have intention. We have to have proper thought when we recite blessings. There are few that have the proper thought. And in many, many mitzvahs, there are very different levels in the performance of a mitzvah.
And even the greatest scholars of this generation are not at the level of fulfilling these mitzvahs appropriately. Because they don't learn the laws properly, they don't learn the background of the mitzvahs, and perhaps they're not fulfilling them appropriately. Therefore, someone who desires to do full teshuva, to learn the study of character, to learn the study of how to be appropriate in every area of life, and then a person will be able to look at himself and say, ah, I realized my mistakes.
On the mistakes that he's made throughout his lifetime, and everything that he learns, he should evaluate and analyze whether or not he himself is guilty in these areas. Did I fulfill them appropriately or not? And if he sees something that he did not fulfill appropriately, he should do everything he can to fulfill it in his best possible way. A person should also study the book of the mitzvahs of the Rambam. The book of the mitzvahs
of the Rambam, what are they? The Rambam lists all of the 613 commandments that one is obligated to perform them in this world. To learn every mitzvah, to understand its meaning and its background. And to fulfill each one according to its reasons. And this is the ultimate proper teshuva. And for a person to independently work on himself to do the mitzvahs appropriately and to fulfill them in the greatest possible way. I want to share with you that one of the most beautiful videos I've ever seen,
there are videos always floating around, I'm sure everybody in all the messaging apps, people send you political videos, they send you videos from the IDF blowing up a tunnel, they send you a video of this, I'm sure you've gotten all of them. A video that I got last week of Bar Kuperstein, he was one of the hostages that was released in the recent batch of releases and he said when he got out, first thing he did, he got out
during the holiday of Sukkot, first thing he wanted to do was shake the luluf. As a guy who was not really religious, first thing he wanted to do was shake the luluf. He says I have an opportunity for a few more hours. When it was almost the end of Sukkot, the beginning of Shemini Atzeret, he wanted to fulfill that mitzvah. And now he's putting together thousands and thousands and thousands of people to publicly wear the tefillin. To publicly wear the tefillin.
He said when he was down 100 meters underground in these tunnels, he started thinking about his relationship with G-d, about what is life, what's the purpose, why did G-d put me here? And here's a guy who the only thing he wants to do is fulfill a mitzvah, to do it properly. The greatest gift in the world is for this individual to put on tefillin. He wants to put on tefillin. And he wants everybody to have that mitzvah with him.
I think it's such a powerful thing, not only for himself to fulfill it, I hope that one day in my life, I've put on every single day, I put on tefillin since I'm 13 years old, since a month before I'm 13. Every single day. I hope that one time in my life I merit to put on tefillin with the purity, with the holiness, with the joy, with the intention, that this individual put it on, coming out as a hostage. One time to fulfill the mitzvah like that.
I'm jealous. It's an unbelievable thing to fulfill one mitzvah in purity, to fulfill one mitzvah in absolute holiness. What an unbelievable thing. And for him to include all of us in this mitzvah, and for everyone to not be shy. You know what? I used to be very shy when I was traveling, you know, to put on tefillin. I would find a quiet corner, find a quiet corner, not everybody needs to see that I'm Jewish. Now, out in the open. No problem.
No problem. Why am I shy? Why am I shy? You know what happened? I remember where I was, someplace around the world, on one of my trips, I think, to Israel. I stopped, I think maybe it was in, I don't even remember where it was, someplace in Europe. But we were rerouted, we ended up having an extra stopover. I'm in the airport, and some totally random guy, never met the guy before, never met him after. And he sees me putting on tefillin, he says,
you know, I'm Jewish too, right? So I figured Hashem sent him to me for a reason. So I asked him, I said, would you like to put on tefillin as well? He says, yeah, if you show me, I'll be happy to. Right? So here you go, in an airport, you can have a mitzvah, someone putting on tefillin. Because what? Because you just said hi. Because you wore it out in the environment. If I would have hid in the side room over there,
no one would know. He would never see me, he wouldn't know. But now, there's no need for us to hide. If you think that people don't look at you and say that you're a Jew without wearing tefillin, you got to be kidding me. Okay, it says Jew all over your face. Okay, so what are we hiding? What are we hiding? We think like, oh, not everyone needs to see, not everyone needs to know. We're just sticking it to their eyes.
What do you mean? It's our obligation. It's our obligation. But the point is like this, I got a little carried away here. We have to be proud of our Judaism. We have to be proud. We don't need to hide it ever. Don't hide it. Wear it as a badge of honor. Wear it as a badge of honor. You have a yarmulke, you wear a kippa, wear it out in the open. There's no need to hide it.
You wear tzitzit, wear them out in the open. There's no need to hide it. The nations of the world should see that we're proud to be Jews. The name of G-d is written all over you. They look at you, they say, oh, this is G-d's people. Not only in the way they dress, but in the way they act, hopefully. In the way they talk, in the way they interact with everyone, the way they're respectful, the way they're kind.
That's what we need to be. I think this is something which should not ever be overlooked by us, the responsibility that we have. To be G-d's people means we have an added level of scrutiny on us. It doesn't mean there's not many, I mean, there's a tremendous privilege, right? Because there's mitzvahs, and we have commandments, and we have a relationship with G-d. But we don't, in the eyes of the nations of the world, we don't get to vacation
wherever we want to vacation. We don't get to eat whatever we want. Yeah, it's a little bit more difficult, yes. We don't get to eat whatever we want. We don't get to go wherever we want. We don't get to go whenever we want. Oh, Shabbos, I can't do it. You know, it's an amazing story. I want to share with you the story, and then we'll continue to day number 158. There's a story of a speaker from South Africa, very, very powerful, motivational speaker.
And I don't remember his name off the top of my head, but he was hired by Microsoft to speak for their annual event. It's a big event, and they hired him for a lot of money, and he was the keynote speaker. And Shomer Shabbos, Jew, when he gets the schedule in his email, he's in shock because he thought it was going to be on a Sunday. Turns out it's on a Shabbos. I mean, it was a weekend event,
but he was going to have to speak on Sunday. Turns out they put him on schedule for Shabbos. He calls them up and he says, oh, I think there's a little mistake here. I can't speak on Shabbos. I can only speak on Sunday. So they're like, no, no, no. This is the keynote. The keynote is on Saturday. He says, well, I'm sorry, I can't do that. He says, okay, your fees just were doubled. Okay, we're going to pay you double the amount
and just come on Shabbos. He says, I'm sorry, I don't think you can understand. I'm not going to speak on Shabbos. I can only do it on Sunday. Okay, Shabbos, I'm Jewish, I'm Orthodox. I observed the Shabbos. They said, okay, we'll get back to you. They call up one of the senior people at Microsoft, and he says, pay him what he wants, right? Just pay him what he wants and he'll do it. And they offered him like an exorbitant amount of money,
like way more. And I'm talking about people like this speaker fees about $100,000 for such a thing, you know, with including expenses. It was like five or six times that they were ready to pay for him to just speak on Shabbos, just do your speech. So they tried, it didn't work. So they upped at the ranks in Microsoft to the second in command in Microsoft. And he was on a private plane with Bill Gates. And they come, they're like, we have a big problem.
Like our speaker doesn't want to speak on Shabbos. He's Orthodox Jew. He's not going to speak on Shabbos. They said, did you offer him triple the amount? Did you offer him quadruple the amount? They said, yeah, we offered him any money he wanted, but he's not willing to do it on Shabbos. And Bill Gates said something which is really remarkable. He says, isn't that amazing to have something that even money can't buy? We have to realize that. You know what that means?
I can tell you this, Scott, I know 100% will agree with me. If you offered me $25 trillion, okay, to drive to Galveston on Shabbos, I won't do it. I don't care. I don't care what money you give me. There's no money in the world you can possibly offer me that will make me desecrate the Shabbos. I'm sorry, you won't. And neither will my children, right? Because Shabbos is such a tremendous gift. Being part of Hashem's people, yes,
we're going to have to let go of money. It's fine. I let go of the $25 trillion. It's too bad for Shabbos. Shabbos is the greatest gift in the world. You know this, the big attorney in New York, what's his name? The Jewish guy. Everybody. Okay, it's like the big one, Brofman, Ben Brofman. He was a lawyer, an attorney for one of the big rappers, one of the big, big, big rappers. I'm certain I don't know him.
Yeah, so he's a Shomer Shabbos Jew. Not the rapper, the lawyer. Okay, and he basically, you know, he told him, like, you can call me 24 hours a day, six days a week. Do not call me on Shabbos. Like, do not call me on Shabbos. Okay, because I'm not picking up the phone. Okay, you can call him at four in the morning on Thursday night, no problem. You can call him at, you know, anytime on a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Thursday, Friday, Friday night when sunset hits, don't even bother because I'm not picking up the phone. One Friday night, Mr. Brofman is sitting with his family at the Shabbos table and his phone starts ringing and his phone is ringing and his phone is ringing and he sees it's this client of his who's worth mega, mega, you know, bucks. And he says, like, what's wrong with this guy? Like, why is he calling me now? Like, you know, either way after Shabbos,
he sees he missed 14 phone calls from the guy and he calls him back. He's like, what's going on? I told you, don't call me on Shabbos. What are you calling me? He says, he says, I almost thought it was an emergency. I was thinking it's an emergency. You know, it's like, he says, he says, no, no, no. He says, I was sitting with a bunch of my friends and I was, this is what the rapper says.
He says, I was sitting with a bunch of my friends and we had a bet and I bet them that you're so, you're so true to your convictions, to your Shabbos, to your Sabbath that I will call. He's a billionaire rapper and you're not going to pick up the phone for me. They're like, it's impossible. Of course he's going to pick up the phone for you. He says, fine. How many times do you want me to try to call him?
He will not pick up the phone. And they had the massive bet. And of course he wouldn't pick up the phone. What do you mean pick up? He said, you crazy? You think I'd pick up the phone? I told you, you don't call me on Shabbos. Shabbos is holy. Shabbos is sanctified. Shabbos, the only thing that is, that pushes away Shabbos is something which is life-threatening. It's the only thing. Shabbos is the greatest gift in the world.
If we have the opportunity to even, it doesn't mean that we're, okay, in one day, 25 hours, we're going to do it. First week we're on. No, you could do just Friday night. You can do just two hours, light Shabbos candles, have dinner with your family. Start with the television off. Put away the phone. Just one step, one of the small things that we can start in bringing Shabbos into our lives. The absolute greatest gift in the world.
We're bringing light into our life, into our home, into our family forever. Such an amazing gift. Okay, this concludes day number 157.
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