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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!
Welcome back. We are at Way 33. Way number 33 is Ohev Et Hatzedakot. If you remember, we spoke about Ahuv, which means to be loved. We spoke about what it means to be loved and how do we gain that love with other people. The next, number 31, was Ohev Etat Makom, is loving God. Then we spoke about Ohev Etat Briyot, loving humanity.
And then we are now up to Ohev Et Hatzedakot, which is love the righteous. Love the righteous, not only righteous people, but the righteousnessness. Love righteousness. To be a good person, you need to enjoy being good. Enjoy being good. Be on the right side of things. So I know this can be a politically charged statement. What do you mean? What does it mean to be right? My side is always right. Your side is always wrong. So let's open up the Chumash.
I want to share with you the verses in the Torah in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse number 15, Re'ei natati lefanecha hayom eta chayim eta tov eta mavet etara. See, I have placed before you today the life and the good, and the death and the evil. That which I command you today, asher anochi mitzavcha hayom, le'av at Hashem elokecha, le'lechet bederachah ve'leshmor mitzvotav ve'chukotav, ve'mishvatav, ve'chayita ve'rabita, ve'irachta at Hashem elokecha ba'aretza she'ata, ba'asham le'rishta. Let me translate.
That which I command you today, to love Hashem your God, to walk in His ways, to observe His commandments, His decrees, and His ordinances, then you will live and you will multiply, and Hashem your God will bless you in the land to which you come to possess it. What a beautiful verse in the Torah. Verses, verse 15 and verse 16, beautiful. Let's see what the commentaries say. God is saying very clearly, there are two categories you can choose, good, bad, life and death. Those are your choices.
It means, life is considered good, death is considered bad. What is life? And we see that there are many people in life who are not good. They're choosing death while they're alive. You have to understand the Talmud says, tzaddikim, the righteous, b'missasim k'ruyim chayim, even when they're dead are considered living, and rishayim, evil people, even in their life, b'chayim, af b'chayim, are considered dead. That means that even when someone is living in this world, they could be dead.
And even when someone is passed on from this world, they could be living. Why? Because of the choices one makes. If someone makes a choice, that is, and God gives us the qualifications of it, follow my ordinance. This is the manual. We spoke about this in way number 14. We spoke about the written Torah. This is God's manual for living. You want to know how to live life? God gives us a manual. God tells us exactly what we need to do.
He's the owner's manual. He's the manufacturer. He writes exactly. He created us. He tells us, listen, you want to maximize this product? This is the way you maximize the product. You want to do it your own way? Good luck. Try to buy any product. You buy any type of piece of electronic device. You buy a new phone. It tells you to charge it before you turn it on. You say, no, I'm not going to charge it before I turn it on.
Okay, no problem. See, your battery won't last. Then you wonder two months later, why is your battery not working properly? Well, follow instructions. You have a manual, and if you follow the manual that was written by the manufacturer, it's likely that you'll benefit the most from the product. God gives us the guidelines. Let me just read to you the commentary here. Choose life. This parasha ends with an exhortation.
The choice between the Torah and a diametrically opposed way of life is no less than a choice between life and death. And God urges his people to choose life. Again, that's the owner's recommendation, the manufacturer's recommendation, the editor's note. I created this beast. I'm telling you, follow my recommendation. Choose life. It's my recommendation. Choose life. The life and the good, the death and the evil. Rav Yochanan said of this verse, from the day that God made this declaration,
goodness and evil did not emanate from his mouth. Rather, evil comes from its own accord to one who does evil, and good comes to one who does good, meaning God put all of the options in the world. God put all the options. You can choose to be good, and you can choose to be evil. It's your choice. That means you can't blame circumstances for things. Mother Teresa and a terrorist had the same options. She chose to be Mother Teresa. He chose to be a terrorist.
It was a choice. And to live a life where people say, I had no choice. There's no such thing, you had no choice. Every person can choose. Our Mishnah teaches us here, love righteousness. Love righteousness. Be righteous. The Torah recommends this as well. The Torah here in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 15 and 16. God himself is telling us, choose righteousness. Choose the right way to live life. The obligations are easier when we get in touch with the pleasure of doing the right thing.
When we understand, I'll give you an example, Shabbos, Shabbos, God recommends, listen, I'm telling you, take every seventh day off. No time for business, no time for anything other than taking a break. If someone doesn't invest in it, they will never see the benefit in it. We talked about this previously. The word Oneg Shabbat, the pleasure of Shabbat, Shabbos is called, one of the only things that's called by the Torah, a pleasure, a pleasure. You want to know what pleasure is? Shabbos is a pleasure.
The same word of Oneg, if you take the ayin and put it at the end of the word, it becomes a negah, it becomes a plague. If you don't see it properly, if you put the ayin in the wrong place, the ay, in the wrong place, instead of seeing it as a pleasure, you see it as a plague. And this is our challenge today. Our challenge is to really invest in real pleasures. Doing the right thing is a soul experience, a far greater pleasure than any material success.
After a difficult task, pause to reflect how great you feel. You finished something, you worked hard on it, take a second to enjoy it. Acknowledge. You know, we do this when someone concludes a tractate of Talmud, we make a celebration, make a party. There's a story told about one of the great sages, he made a siyam, he concluded a tractate and he ran to the marketplace and bought himself a honey cake. And he came back and made the celebration.
So everyone's like, why did you need to go to get a honey cake? Like what, you could have made a lachayim and that's it. He says, no, my mother told me that whenever I finish a tractate, I should always eat a honey cake because honey is symbolic of sweetness of the Torah. It says that the mesuki medvash v'nofes tzufim, the words of the Torah are sweet like honey. So I should always taste that honey. I should always have that sweetness whenever I conclude. Take a moment to appreciate.
Many times people don't stop and just enjoy the moment. Enjoy the goodness that you're involved with. I had someone recently, it's a sidebar. He asked me, he says, you're involved with this, you're involved with that, you're involved with this, you're involved with that. He says, what, you're all over the place. You're busy with too many things. I said, no, we say, King David tells us, ach tov v'chesed yudifuni kol yimei chayai.
We say this in Psalms where King David pleads, he said, God, keep me busy with good things. We'll all be busy. Every one of us are busy every minute of the day. What a great privilege to be busy with good things. Be busy helping people out, be busy assisting people, be busy guiding people, giving counsel to people. We're going to be busy anyway, might as well be busy with good things. Obligations help us to actualize our potential. If you obligate yourself to good things, say yes.
We've said before, the answer is always yes. That's one of my policies in life. Say yes. Get yourself involved with good things. Yeah, but I really don't have time, I really don't want to. Get involved, make a commitment because you'll never regret doing a good thing. You will never regret doing a good thing. Obligations are inevitable in life, so you might as well enjoy them. If you're already doing something, have fun with it. Enjoy it.
You know, the word noten, which means to give, is a palindrome, nun, tah, nun. When you give, it comes right back at you. It may not come back in a financial way, it may not come back in a material way, but it definitely will come back in a spiritual and a meaningful way. When you volunteer for something and there's no recognition and there's no side benefits, you're not getting a plaque up on the wall and they're not writing you in the newsletter, you know what?
There's a way to enjoy that and appreciate that, altruistic, no bells and whistles involved. It's just plain righteousness. That's what this Mishnah is teaching us here. When I was in Yeshiva, I told you this previously, my embarrassing story of how I learned how to be a giver. I would bring my snacks, my special delicacies from the United States, and I would hide them in my closet in my dorm room, and the Israelis never saw these things. It's not like it is today.
You have the import-export is so incredible. You have more products in Israel. You can buy Costco products in the stores in Israel. It's amazing. I was giving a class on kindness, on how to give, and I realized that I was a hypocrite because here I was talking about being a giver, but then I would hide in my room, make sure nobody was there, nobody saw, and took my little treats that I had from the United States.
So what I started doing is I made myself a commitment that I wasn't going to take any for myself unless I gave to two people first, and I had to break that habit, had to break that commitment locked me in to forcing myself to do something that was against my nature. I had to learn to give other people, and what happened was is that eventually it became almost a second nature where I couldn't enjoy something unless I was enjoying it with someone else.
And I think that it's a very important obligation that every person in their own lives, in their own reality, has to obligate themselves to righteousness at some level. You know what? It may not be my nature. I don't like to do it. I don't... Commit yourself. Get yourself involved with something. So I think it's important for us to define for ourselves, especially in this day and age, and I know it could be very inflammatory for me to say this, but there are a lot of
things going on in this world that are absolute craziness. Absolute craziness. And you know what? If people choose a certain lifestyle, that's their choice, and we have to respect and love every human being, and we definitely don't have to disparage people, but we have to reaffirm to ourselves what is right and what is wrong. To ourselves, as individuals, and perhaps for our children, to educate them. When you see someone who breaks into a store, it shouldn't become okay for us to just say,
well, that's the way they do things. That's the way... No. Reaffirm that this is evil. This is theft. This is a crime. This is wrong. And to reiterate it for ourselves, and to confirm this, this is not righteousness. This is evil. This is wrong. And not to allow it to be okay. Okay? So, my dear friends, that concludes way number 33.