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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, everybody. We are on way number 10. Way number 10 is b'shimush chachamim, serving the wise. So we started off saying how important study was, but study alone on our own isn't enough. We have to have mentorship. We need to have guidance. We need to have someone show us the way because just opening up a book, as brilliant as the book might be, like the Bible, five books of Moses, is brilliant. But if you don't have the proper guidance,
things can be misunderstood. Things can be taken out of context. Things can be terribly wrong if we don't have guidance from a teacher. So the Mishnah here teaches us to serve the wise because more than just you learn from their wisdom, you will learn from the way they conduct their lives. You learn from how they deal with issues, how they treat others. I remember my rabbi, of blessed memory, every time I spoke to him after my first child was born, he would ask
me over the phone, he would ask me, so how's the family? How's your wife? How are the kids? And then he would ask me a very odd question. He would say to me, do you wake up at night for your child? And of course I do. And I told him I did. After a while, I asked him, I said, why do you keep asking me that question? You always ask me, do I wake up for my children? He said, because if you
don't wake up for your children, you're not my student. Yeah, you can't feed your child. So many people say, I can't feed the child. Let my wife get out of bed and bring the child, right? And take and feed. No, no, no. You can't feed the child. Wake up and get the baby from the crib. Bring it to your wife so she can feed the child. Learn. My grandfather said that the students of Rabbi Yerucham, of his teacher, a Musser master in his conduct, he was a godly person,
very godly person. His student once went swimming with his rabbi, Rabbi Yerucham. The student said, I learned more from how he swam than from all of his lectures. The awe, the reverence, the godliness. You think, oh, they're in the pool. It's, you know, no, no, no, no. The seriousness was visible. He was able to see what a saintly, holy man this was. The Mishnah tells us, I've learned a lot from my teacher, more from my friends, and I learned the
most from my students. Learn from everyone. Serving a wise man is greater than learning with a wise man because you learn from their ways. You can learn endlessly. My rabbi, I mentioned this previously, goes to pick out flowers for his wife. One of the students shared that he saw him at the florist for over 20 minutes picking the exact perfect flower for his wife. If the flowers are a representation of your love, you need to ensure that it's perfect. And that, I think,
is a great lesson for all of his students to take this seriously. See their ways and learn. You know, there's a story told about Aristotle that his students found him in a very compromised, adulterous situation. And they said, you're the great Aristotle. What an amazing philosopher. How can you live like this? He says, no, no, no. Now I'm just me. I'm not Aristotle. There's no separation in Judaism between your front and your inner. It is who you are. In fact,
your face is the word, panim. It comes from the same word of innards, which is pnim, your inside. Your outside needs to reflect your inside. In fact, your outside does reflect your inside. Sometimes people want to just separate the two. But in reality, the inside and the out need to be the same. And my grandfather, some of the things that I learned from him, as first as he had absolute self-control of his physical, his emotional, he wouldn't ever burst out in anger
and burst out in... A student of my grandfather said that he once was running late to one of my grandfather's lectures. My grandfather was beginning his lecture. And this student, who is about 6'2", 280 pounds, he's a big fellow. And he's running into the classroom where my grandfather's teaching, not realizing that when he opened the door, slammed the door open, it went right into my grandfather, like T-boned my grandfather with the door. And he said that had it been anybody
else, they would yell at him, scream at him, and say, what's wrong with you? Are you a wild animal? Why are you running in like this? My grandfather didn't even look to see who it was. Absolute self-control. My grandfather would say, you know, there's a concept in Judaism called Kalut Rosh, which is lightheadedness. My grandfather said Kalut Rosh doesn't only mean lightheadedness. It means someone who doesn't have something that's occupying his mind. I'll give you an example.
If someone were to walk in right now into the front door here, lightheadedness would be turning to see who it is. What does it make a difference who it is? You're in synagogue and someone behind you starts to say Kaddish. Everyone turns around to see. Why? It's because if we don't have something else in our mind, we're busy being lightheaded in a very literal sense without having something concrete to hold us down, to keep us focused. My grandfather would sit for dinner
and he would move a limb without needing it to be moved. His hand would be resting on his leg and he would be using one hand to eat and that's it. The other hand wouldn't move the entire meal. Not because he was lazy. He didn't need to move. Perfect self-control. My grandfather would set up the Shabbos table and the Shabbos candles for my grandmother and he never let us help him. Even till his 90s. This is his mitzvah. This is his job.
No one else does it for him. We asked him, I asked him every Friday when I was there, I would ask him, Saba, can I please help you? He said, no, no, this is my job. This is my responsibility. My grandfather never let anyone carry his tefillin for him. His tefillin, phylacteries, coming home from shul every morning, he wouldn't let anybody carry it for him. I asked once, I said, Saba, why don't you let me carry it for you? He was in his late 80s at the time.
He said the tefillin are like the ark. It says the ark, those who carried the ark didn't carry the ark. The ark carried them. He says, my tefillin are my ark. It carries me. I don't carry it. Just the perspective. My grandfather was very cautious to never be dependent on someone else. Even a guardrail, he would walk down the steps, he wouldn't touch the guardrail. We become dependent many times. It's like it's comfortable. It's easier for me. He wanted to
be self-sufficient. So even the guardrail he wouldn't hold on to. Why not? Didn't need. So a person needs to learn from a teacher specifically on a regular basis. I have, as many of you know, I have a regular phone call with my rabbi every week where I seek guidance, not only in my own personal life, in my marriage, with my children, with advice in life, with guidance in every area and also halachic questions that arise. My job as a student is to seek out my rabbi. You have
to understand this. My rabbi will never pick up a phone and call me and say, hey, how come you don't call me and ask me your questions? That's not the way it works. I seek him out. I call him. And if I don't, I remember once one of the students who learned with me by my rabbi, he had a question he needed to seek guidance for. And I said to him, why don't you call rabbi?
He said, oh, I tried. I said, you tried or you tried? Let me show you how to try. I put on the phone in the office, put it on speaker and I dialed the number. And of course, it goes to voicemail. And I said, hello, my name is Ari Wolbe and I am in urgent need to speak to rabbi. It's a very important matter. And I just continue talking till someone picks up the
phone. And I said, here you go. And I give him the phone. I said, that's trying. If you really want to speak to him, you have to seek him out. He's not going to seek you out. He's not going to be saying, hey, you haven't called me in three months. So what's going on? You know, that's not the way it works. A person needs to have humility to ask, ask a question. You know what asking a question means? It means that I'm deficient in knowledge
and I'm accepting that. I'm accepting that deficiency. And it takes humility. You need to ask. I don't know everything. And because I don't know everything, I'm seeking someone who's wiser than me. I'm seeking their wisdom. Even idle chatter of a wise man, the Talmud says, is considered Torah learning. Even the idle chatter, you see two righteous people standing in a street corner, Torah scholars. And they're not talking about biblical sources. They're just together talking. Idle chatter is considered Torah because there's something to learn from
that as well. To learn about life, you need a mentor, someone to guide you on a rational and consistent path. Human beings are subjective. We need someone to help give us objectivity. I shared the story many years ago, not many, about four or five years ago. I was in Israel and I had a very important meeting with my rabbi about a very specific matter. And my rabbi did not give me the advice I thought he would. He reprimanded me in a very severe and stern way.
And as a student, I bowed my head and accepted. It's not going to always go because my perspective is this is the way I see life. Yeah, but you have blind spots. You have blind spots all around. And you need someone to bring those blind spots to your consciousness so that you don't continue living life with a mistake. It's very important for every person to have someone, a guide, a mentor to share with you objectivity. Independence is human nature. We all want
to be independent. But if you don't moderate it, it will stand in the way of your growth. Be a student of truth. Seek out truth. The most destructive disease is ignorance, not being connected with reality. Get in touch with those who understand life and pump them for information. Don't stop. Continue asking. Continue asking. Continue asking. Let's go find a teacher and go find a teacher now. It could be the rabbi of your synagogue.
It could be a torch rabbi. It could be. But you got to go out and seek them and get guidance. My grandfather, when he was, I think, 75 years old, I asked him, do you have a rabbi? The Mishnah says that everyone should always have a rabbi, someone they learned from, always make for yourself a rabbi. He's 75 years old. How many people are available for him to learn from? He told me who his rabbi was. I said, what? Your rabbi is like 15, 20 years younger
than you. He said he taught me my Aleph base. He taught me my Aleph base. That's how humble he was in front of his rabbi. I think they learned, they studied Kabbalah and Kabbalah is all based on the letters of the Aleph base. So that's what he was referring to, that he taught him the Aleph base of Kabbalah, the Kabbalistic teachings. There are a few ideas to get us started, things to ask. What does it mean to be a good person? What does it mean to, you ever wonder,
what does it mean to be a good person? How can I be kind to others without being taken advantage of? How can I control my anger? What is the key to greatness? How can I maximize my time? What makes a marriage successful? How do I use my full potential? How do I break out of laziness? These are all important questions that every person should seek out, get guidance. And it doesn't have to be these. A person can ask about their own life, questions they've always been
wondering about themselves, about their family. So life is complicated. We need a teacher to help us understand it. And by serving him, we can pick up on his wisdom. But look, look at their ways, look at their ways, and you'll see greatness. Look at their ways. Thank you very much for way number 10. Let's go get a rabbi. Let's go get a teacher. And we'll see you all in way number 11.