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A-Muse is unscripted Torah musings by Rabbi Ari Bensoussan
Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Gonna do another muse right now. Just something to think about because so this happened. You know, we just had a fundraiser recently.
Speaker 1:And right before the fundraiser, a good close student of money shows up to the house to come help me out with something. And when he's there, I see he pulls up in this gorgeous brand new car. And I'm like, wow. Yeah. It's an amazing car.
Speaker 1:It is the Mercedes EQS SUV, a beautiful car. And he said to me, rabbi, to tell you the truth, I got this deal. And with this deal, I'm paying less than what you would pay for a minivan for this car, and I'm losing it for 2 years. I said to my come on, man. How much you pay?
Speaker 1:He tells me his price and sure enough, if I were today to go and lease a minivan for 2 years, I'd be paying about $100 more a month for a minivan. He said, you wanna take a ride? I said, wow. Let's do this. We go into the car, and it's an all electric car.
Speaker 1:It's got the beautiful, like, panoramic sunroof on top. Everything inside the car was just comfy. It smells brand new. You rev it up. And because it's an electric car, it doesn't have that room room, but has that like There's an entire almost like disco action, like lights going on inside there.
Speaker 1:The thing is really it's a masterpiece. And we drive around the neighborhood and it just takes off. It purrs. We fly around the block once, twice, and we come back. And he says to me, so what do you think?
Speaker 1:He said, Rabbi, you know, this can be something that you can fit all the kids inside. And I was thinking, you know, my kids would think like, wow. Abbo, like, we made it now. It's amazing. Beautiful car.
Speaker 1:And I live in Los Angeles. Gas is so expensive. This is an electric car. So I know, you know, you always have to pay for electricity, but it will be a lot cheaper than what we're paying here for gas. And I was thinking to myself, should I?
Speaker 1:Could I? Could a rabbi be driving inside this Mercedes, this incredibly expensive car? I mean, he really got the thing for half price practically. And he said, look. I don't know if this is gonna last for too long.
Speaker 1:I spoke to the dealer, and maybe there's just one left. You know? I'm not sure, but, hey. Let me know. And then it begins.
Speaker 1:The process of thinking, what would it look like? Honestly, what would it look like? There's a rabbi who pulls up in a brand new Mercedes, and this rabbi is about to do a fundraiser. Now the crazy thing about this is is that I could put up signs around the car and I can, like, advertise to people and say to them, I'm paying less than a minivan. You'd be okay if I pulled up in a Honda Odyssey.
Speaker 1:I think you'd be okay even if I pulled up with something a little higher end than that. If I if I pulled up in the Grand Wagoneer, maybe you'd forgive me. Maybe. So but the Mercedes? Come on.
Speaker 1:You can't pull that off. People will be wondering what's his deal. Really, this is the guy who's going around and messaging everybody, help out my organization to go and to teach in LA so expensive. Well, of course, LA is so expensive. Look at you.
Speaker 1:You're ripping around in a $110,000 car. Of course, it's expensive for you. Or do I look at the other way and say, what do I care? Just let people fuck. Let them think.
Speaker 1:At At the end of the day, I know that I'm not splurging my money. And more than that, shouldn't I start to think that a minivan is a $100 more a month? And a minivan, I mean, those things chug down gasoline like you can't imagine. So it'll probably be another $200 a month, $300 a month if I drive around in that. So I'd be saving money.
Speaker 1:And so shouldn't I care about what I'm saving? But then you're giving off this wrong vibe to the world. Do I care about what they think? Do I care about the image that I'm giving off? Where do I go with this thought process?
Speaker 1:Well, my son came home. He came home from 10th grade, and I told him about it. And Bar Kok Shem is a good boy. He's in a terrific yeshivish high school. He just laughed at me.
Speaker 1:He said to me, Abba, no. Just no. Please don't. He said, and if you do, please don't ever pick me up in school. I said, it's just too much.
Speaker 1:It's just too much on the shoulders. My wife and I were talking about it. I wasn't sure. I guess deep down, I knew that the answer was always no, but I wasn't sure why is the answer have to be no. What is it that's pulling me towards that?
Speaker 1:Can't I forgive myself a little bit? Can't allow myself just a little bit luxury, a little bit enjoyment? It's 24 months. Hashem is lobbying you a good deal over here. Be comfortable.
Speaker 1:Drive around in a comfort. Now, nothing against my minivan. I love my minivan. I absolutely I really do. There's nothing against it, but, hey, it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not the Mercedes EQS. That's for sure. I saw the rubs that I davened by on Shabbat. And as we were walking home together, we happened to have walked by this exact car parked on the side. He was saying something to me, and I stopped him right in middle of a sentence, right in the middle.
Speaker 1:And I said to him, I gotta ask you. You see this car right over here? He's like, what, the Mercedes? I said, yeah. It's gorgeous.
Speaker 1:Right? He has a beautiful car. I said to him, would it be crazy if I ever pulled up to your house in this car? He said, what do you mean? I said, well, the deal with this, $100 less than a minivan.
Speaker 1:He said to me, Ari, if one of your donors came and gave you this car for free, you cannot drive in it. He said, I would judge you. If I saw you driving this thing, I would say, what is he thinking? What? Are you kidding me?
Speaker 1:There's no chance. No. You you you can't have this look. It just it's not correct. It's not okay.
Speaker 1:You can't preach a lifestyle and then go and live something completely different. I asked my students in high school and all of them said to me, no. You can't. Rabbi, please don't. It's gonna it almost it's gonna bother us to see you driving in something like that.
Speaker 1:And at first, I'm gonna tell you honestly, my initial reaction to so many of the naysayers was, I'm gonna use the word anger or sadness. Because I was thinking to myself, why can't you fargin is the Yiddish. Why can't you forgive? Let a rabbi have his enjoyment. What's wrong?
Speaker 1:Let me just drive her like like like, why not? Like, why can't you just but then today, and this is why I'm doing this muse because literally, this is thought processes. This is me musing to myself and then thinking maybe people would like to share the thought process. It hit me between last night and today, this thought. My students love me.
Speaker 1:This rabbi, we're extremely close to each other. The people I brought this up to, other students of mine, they all really care for me. So why are they saying this? And I believe that the answer is is because they were thinking, Rabbi, there's certain things we don't want to see you give credence, give respect, give excitement and honor to. Yeah.
Speaker 1:A Mercedes, the electric one, that that cost less than a minivan, that you're paying a few $100 more for a month, that Mercedes, which on paper, you can buy too many vans for the price of that one Mercedes, that one, when we see you in it, we see somebody who we look up to, somebody who we respect because he at least claims to have his values straight, because he preaches a Torah lifestyle, because he tells people that running after the gashmirut, running after the physicality is just beneath us and you don't have to, Because we've put you on that pedestal, because we look up to you. Please don't show us that you've given in to. Don't show us that you kinda tanked a little bit. You know, there was a beautiful video going around of Rabbi Bender from Darhe, at Sadek at Sadek Aviad. And he was driving a Bentley.
Speaker 1:And there were a couple of different, I guess you can call them, people giving their opinions. Oh, where have I been? There was dry. Until finally, the word came out that what happened was is that there was a kid who was on his way to treatment either for chemo or something along those lines, and his dream was always to be driven in an amazing car. And Rabbi Bender went maybe it was a Rolls Royce.
Speaker 1:Rabbi Bender went then, got a hold of one for him and said, I'm gonna even drive it. He wasn't giving any credence or hashivot to the car. He was giving it to the kid. You know, I don't think my students wanted to look at me any smaller. I think my students wanted to look at me as somebody who were so happy that we believed that our rabbi is above that, and I know that I'm not.
Speaker 1:I know that I'm trying to work my way up. Please don't think that I believe I'm bigger than I am. I'm the first guy who knows that I'm not, but at the same time, I am the guy who's standing in front of the classroom teaching, and I am the guy trying to give over some kind of an MS to them. And so from the aspect of it or at least the way that the students were looking at it, it couldn't be. But then I took one step further and I thought about myself.
Speaker 1:You know, I've never really had a yade Sahara for cars. Not my deal. Unfortunately I shouldn't say unfortunately because that's what makes us great. So maybe we can even say fortunately. I do have a drive for other things, for other Yeatsahers.
Speaker 1:That that is the battle, that is the challenge, and that is what makes us actually great in life on the other side of being in control of those things. But the vice of driving, like, really cool cars never spoke to me. I grew up with very simple parents. We always had simple cars in the home. And when I would see other people with really cool cars, they'd be like, wow, that's cool.
Speaker 1:But I don't know. It was never like a value. It was never something on a bucket list, that I wanted to go after. It would be nice. It'd be comfortable, but not something I'm like, oh, man.
Speaker 1:I wish I had that in my life. And I thought to myself, what if? What if I went and had this car for 2 years? And what if I built a new vice into myself? What if I built a new thirst for something that I never had before?
Speaker 1:A new taiva. Who needs it? After those 2 years when I go back to my minivan, who needs it? Would I push for it now? Would I feel that there's a lack if I don't have it?
Speaker 1:And this gave me such a strong lesson. This gave me a lesson of the idea where a lot of times people ask, let me just try something once. Let me just try whether it be smoking cigarettes, smoking pot, any kind of extracurricular activity that may be either against the Torah or against health, against normal living. Let me just try it once. And I'm telling you, by doing that, you may be creating a vice, a lust within yourself that before that lust you were perfectly happy in life to live it to the fullest without needing that thing.
Speaker 1:Somebody who doesn't smoke cigarettes can go and have a delicious, I don't know, restaurant meal. Go out and eat some delicious Chinese food. And once you're done, you're stuffed, you feel great. That's it. Shalom.
Speaker 1:The person is walking around happy as anything. But if he was a smoker, if he was a cigarette smoker that had just given it up, all he'd be thinking afterwards the entire time is, man, you know what would make this perfect? The thing I can't have. You know what would make this perfect? Smoking a cigarette right now.
Speaker 1:That would be absolutely delicious. And then the meal isn't as great. His drive home is not as relaxing. He has this urge, this drive. That's a vice that he has.
Speaker 1:He's just a type of driven to it. You don't need that. You see, people who make buy with less don't know that it's less. They just know that they're living what they have and they're happy with that. And so having come to the realization.
Speaker 1:But I want you to see the other side of a realization of a challenge because I was challenged challenged. Yes or no. But I wanna let you know, every one of these challenges, even something seemingly small as do you get this type of car or that type of car, there's so much value inside it. I found from this challenge how my students see me and what's demanded of me. I found from this challenge, from my rev, how to look at things from such a clear Torah perspective.
Speaker 1:I found from this challenge how I'm meant to look at myself in the decision making of not bringing new vices in my life, not showing my kids the excitement of something that is maybe taking a place from a want to a need. And once luxury becomes a need, everything else beneath it becomes dirt. When in truth, what used to be perfectly fine and happy for you is now the thing that is always lacking because it isn't what it used to or what it could be or the desires that I've built into myself. And that, my friends, is the opposite of really living. Alright.
Speaker 1:That was my thought for today. We'll catch you next time. This was A Muse with Rabbi Ari Ben Shushan.