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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.
All right, welcome back. Way number 38. Way number 38 is the Eino Sameach BeHorahah. Don't delight in decision-making. Horahah means someone who's a moreh, is a teacher. Horahah is also a halachic decisor, someone who makes decisions halachically, is also horahah, but what we need to understand when we talk about decisions is that we need to be responsible in our decisions.
From the second we wake up in the morning, we're making decisions. We are a judge. We're deciding yes or no. Should I get out of bed or hit the snooze button? Should I say hello or should I not say hello? Should I be kind or not be kind? Should I give a smile to someone or not? A compliment or not? These are things that we're making a decision every moment. Torah tells us in Deuteronomy, Uvacharta b'chaim, you shall choose life. It's a decision. It's your choice.
You can choose life and you can choose otherwise. It's all up to you. Uvacharta b'chaim, choose life. God is giving a recommendation. Choose good, choose life. Every conscious moment is another decision. We could decide to sleep through life. And if you decide to sleep through life, there are many good apps that will distract you from life. You can download YouTube and Facebook and TikTok and all of those other Snapchat and Instagram. That's a great way to surf through life and just be negligent of real
occupation in anything. To be conscious is a decision. We have to research these questions. There's a few of them that we're going to mention now. A few questions. We have to research the questions and not give flippant answers. All right. How should I honor my parents? What's the best? Not just to honor my parents. How should I honor my parents? What is the way in which my parents need to be honored? You know that the
Talmud asks, what's an example of kibur avayim, of proper honor of one's father and mother? The Gemara says, go look at this and this person. You'll see how to honor your father. So they went over to this individual and they asked him, what is so special? What is so special about your honoring your father? He says that the following story, the Talmud says, the sages needed a certain gem for the breastplate of the Kohen. They asked around, who has this gemstone? They said, oh, this individual. He has it.
They go to this individual. They knock on his door and he was sleeping. His son opens the door and his son says, I'm sorry, my dad is sleeping. They said, we're ready to pay a lot of money. A lot of money. 50 gold coins. 50 gold coins. Let me check on my father. He goes, he comes back and says, I'm sorry, my father's sleeping. They figured he's just trying to bargain for more money. They said, 100 gold coins. He said, I'm sorry, my father's sleeping. 200 gold coins.
400 gold coins, I believe it was at the end. And he was persistent. My father's sleeping. I can't wake him up. Now imagine this. Imagine this. There's some investor. His car breaks down in front of your house. He says, listen, I'm about to close a deal. I'm going to make 65 billion dollars on this deal. I'm going to give you 50% if you just give me your father's car so that I can get to the closing. They're like, I'm sorry, my father's sleeping.
Father wakes up. You tell him, daddy, guess what? Guess what an amazing child I am. Someone offered me 32 and a half billion dollars and I said no because you were sleeping and I wanted to honor you. What would a typical father say? Are you an idiot? Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? Someone offered you 400 gold coins when it was only worth 50 gold coins and you sent them off?
Sages tell us he knew his father. His father didn't want to be woken up for anything. That was his honor for his father. You have to know your father. He didn't want to be woken up for anything. Our sages asked, okay, so it's a great lesson we learned. It's really special. What was his reward? Here's a guy who honored his father, lost 400 gold coins. What was his reward? Our sages tell us
that later on they needed a red heifer for the temple and the only one who had a perfect red heifer was this individual and they got 400 gold coins for that red heifer. 400 gold coins for that red heifer. So there's a reward. G-d pays a reward for everything, but we learned an incredible teaching, an incredible lesson here. Excuse me. We learned a great lesson of how honoring one's father and mother is very, very subjective. No one can tell you what your parents consider honor.
How will I maintain honesty in business? Are people willing to lose money to be honest? Honesty. Honesty. 100% honesty. We don't lie and we don't trick and we don't write false descriptions on our products, not on Amazon and on anything else, to be 100% honest. How will I care for all of humanity? If someone wants to be the next Mother Teresa, who really loved and cared for every person, she would sleep with the homeless. She wanted to feel their pain. It's a special thing.
Is it not relevant to my life that people are less fortunate? What am I going to do about it? Does G-d really exist? The question is that someone should make an investigation on each of these items and come up with a very, very good answer. Hopefully. There's a student of Torch that investigated. He told me, investigated, is there a G-d for six months. He said for six months he couldn't do work. He couldn't do anything.
All he did all day was listen to lectures and search online for proofs of G-d. After six months he concluded that there's a G-d and if there's a G-d, he's responsible to keep his Torah. So he called me up. He says, Rabbi, I'm starting to keep Shabbos because I have no choice. If G-d is real and I believe in his Torah, now I got to live up to it. I can't live a contradictory life. And he did. Today he's a Shomer Shabbos Jew, who after
investigating completely, and he said his entire life, he was an atheist or an agnostic, whichever one, and he was firm about his beliefs. He started investigating more and more and more. He saw it. There's no other way. He came up with the proofs. They're 100%. He's a very rigorous and very methodical. He went through the entire process. He found there has to be 100% and
he found it. Is there an afterlife? Do we have free will? These are important questions that one needs to ask. In fact, Rabbi Chaim Bosco just launched a new podcast. It's called What is Judaism? Excellent podcast. I'm not a big podcast listener. Although I produce a lot of podcasts, I don't really listen that much. But I listened to the entire episode. It's absolutely magnificent. It's from the average rabbi and Joe.
Together with one of his students, they're learning together. And as many of you may know, Rabbi Bosco did not grow up religious. He grew up. He was baptized. His father's not Jewish. His mother is Jewish. Until an advanced age, he didn't really know anything about Judaism. And he went on a trip to Israel on one of those birthright trips and didn't want to leave. He only left to come to Houston to learn to be part of TORCH. It's really special to have him on our on our staff, but
he goes through the process of things that were his discovery and Joe shares his insight as well. Making decisions will make your life real. We need to make a decision about things, about how we want to live our lives. Not just, well, my dad did this, so I do this. My family always voted a certain way, so I vote a certain way. This is what we eat in our home, so this is what we eat.
Well, you can decide to do differently. You decide to eat healthier. You can decide to eat less healthy. It's a person's decision. And the biggest problem here is that what this way, Way Number 38, is teaching us is to think things through and to come to a conclusion yourself. Don't just allow things to fall upon you by happenstance. The most important decision to make is What am I living for? What am I living for? We said this, if
if you don't know what you're ready to die for, you haven't begun living. If you don't know what you're ready to die for, you haven't begun living. Person, what are you ready to die for? What are you ready to die for? You ready to die for your job? No. You ready to die for your family? Yes. So why don't we live for our family? It's an important thing.
An important decision, an important conversation for us to have with ourselves. The more informed you are, the better your decisions will be. Don't make any decision you're not qualified to make. Evaluate fearfully, not based on prejudices. Be a judge, not a lawyer. We need to make those decisions. We need to not, you know, many times I've talked to people and I say, why don't you try this? They're like, oh, because they'll never, whatever, and they're being the lawyer for someone else. How do you know? Ask.
You might be surprised. Don't be the lawyer for everyone else. Don't be the lawyer for God. Don't be the lawyer for everyone else's decisions that you know they're going to make. You'll be surprised. A wise man says, I don't know, when he doesn't know. There's no mitzvah to give an answer that's not verified, that's not authenticated, that's not clear. If you don't know, say you don't know. There's no need to give an answer that's not correct.
To live rationally and meaningfully, be willing to admit when you don't know. The Talmud says, you want to see a wise person? See someone who says, I don't know. You don't know? He says, I don't know. No, no, no, people think that they need to, I need to give an answer. Otherwise, I shared this. I was once interviewed on the radio here in Houston for some program. They wanted a rabbi and they asked me a question.
One of the questions they asked and I said, you know, that's a great question. I don't know. And suddenly there was this deafening silence. What do we do with that answer? What do you mean you don't know? Now, I'm not claiming to be a wise person, but I really didn't know. My father always told me that I don't know is a very intelligent answer. I don't know is a very intelligent answer. A person shouldn't be afraid to say, I don't know. You don't know?
Okay, so investigate, find out, get a solid answer and then you'll know. And then you can give an answer. Only you determine your life path. Anything you want to change is up to you. I spoke to a guy yesterday and runs an institution and he was telling me all the problems that he has. So I said to him, so tell me, how are you going to change it?
He says, well, I don't know. It's like there's so many different issues. They have an issue with this, an issue with that. I said, who's in charge? He says, I'm in charge. I said, so you're gonna change it. You need help changing it? Okay, that you can ask for. But you need to understand the first thing is that you are responsible to make that change. And if you don't make that change, no one's gonna make that change for you. No one.
There's a process to how to make that change. Fine. But you, the first thing you need to know is it's your decision to make that change. You need to decide to do so. You'll be in a better place. Then others can help. But if you say, it's not my problem, so you'll never solve the problem. You'll always deal with this issue as a problem. All right, my dear friends, that concludes way number 38, Ve'inyos Sameach Be'hora'ah. Don't delight in decision-making, but make good ones.