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A refreshing and clear review of each Parsha in the Torah presented by Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe
00:01 - Intro (Announcement)
You are listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast.
00:10 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
Welcome back everybody. Welcome back to the beautiful new Torch Center. I hope everyone enjoys these bookshelves. Hopefully they'll be filled with our books very, very shortly. And we are now in the beginning of the portion of Toldos. Toldos descendants, children, generations. The first verse says the following Ve'ele toldos Yitzchak, ben Avraham, avraham holid es Yitzchak. And these are the descendants of Isaac, the son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac. So it's very interesting and it's going to be a journey.
00:59
This episode is going to be a little bit of a journey because what I want to talk about is something which is, I think, very rare in our generation, something which is very perhaps unpopular, because we're living in a modern world where everything is new. Technology is advancing faster than we can hold our breath. We see this incredible development of technology, of science, of medicine. It really is incredible. I just saw that Israel created a new pill that someone can swallow, which takes over 500,000 images, so people don't need to do colonoscopies. I mean the science, the incredible wisdom that Hashem has allowed us to discover in his world. All of this wisdom was already here, which is what I want to get to. You see, with all of this modernity comes a certain arrogance, the arrogance of we know better the arrogance of we know our way. So if you look on the development of science and technology, it looks like this world is advancing far beyond anything we could have imagined a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, 3,300 years ago, when the Jewish people were in the desert. Oh, what did they know? They were primitive, ancient people. Oh, what did they know? They were primitive, ancient people. But when we look at character, we see how devoid we are of advancement. We see how much we are failing, as a generation, of living up to the standards of our parents, of our grandparents, of our ancestors, and this is something that's being emphasized in this verse.
02:56
Let's look at the verse again. And these are the descendants of Yitzchak Ben Avraham, of Abraham. We're talking about Isaac. Why do we need to mention Abraham? Our sages tell us Everything that Isaac did he made sure, lined up with his father. You know, it's a very interesting thing.
03:26
We see we go to celebrations of a bris, of a new baby boy, eight days, and they give a name. They may call him Ethan, they may call him David, they may call him, you know, max, but they always give a Jewish name Chaim, moshe, max, but they always give a Jewish name Chaim Moshe. They give some name, they give why? Oh, that was the grandfather's name, that was my great-grandfather's name, that was my great-uncle's brother, who we were very close to when we were children. That was his name. What is really going on and why are we bringing those names back? What's going on with these names?
04:15
I think that, internally, we have a desire to connect with our ancestors, ancestors, and internally, we want to bring the morals, the ethics, the values that they had into our lives, into the lives of our children, and I think that this is something that we need to embrace in our day-to-day lives as well. What we learn from Yitzchak Ychak, by the way. We remember that Yitzchak dug wells. What did he name the wells? The same names that his father named those wells. Why? Because he didn't want to change from the ways of his father. That doesn't mean that he wasn't independent. That doesn't mean that he wasn't unique, which we all desire to be independent and unique. We all want to be special. I don't want to do things. I'm not a robot. That's true. We're not robots. God doesn't want us to be robots. Abraham was very, very different than Isaac, and Isaac and Jacob were extremely different and the tribes were very different from one another. They were extremely different and the tribes were very different from one another. They were all unique. But that doesn't mean that we don't still value the morals, the ethics of our ancestors, and this is something you know.
05:38
There's a famous story told about. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky was once on a plane and he was sitting next to a minister of a different religion and every minute, someone was coming over to Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky and asking him he was a great rabbi. Do you want something to eat? Do you want something to drink? Do you want something to? You know, do you need to lay back a little bit more? Are you comfortable? This that coming all the time, one after another, another person. If people knew that the great rabbi was on a plane, you know they were constantly, you know, ensuring that he had the proper attention to every detail that he needed. So when no one was there, this minister asks him. He says I don't understand. You have all these people coming over to you. They're honoring you, they're asking you what you need. Nobody comes over to me, nobody asks me.
06:31
He says well, the difference between our religions or our worlds, our worldviews, is that we're not. We believe that the greatest people were the people who received the Torah, the people who were 130, 140 generations before us. So the older a person is, the closer they are to the greatest generation to ever live to receive the Torah, he says. But in other cultures they believe that man came from evolution. We evolved from the monkey, we evolved from the apes, so what is there to look up to in a previous generation? We recognize that the closer we are to the source of the giving of the Torah, the greater authenticity, the greater value there is. Which is why we've mentioned a hundred times never accept what a rabbi tells you just because he's a rabbi that includes your current rabbi right here, it doesn't change.
07:50
You hear something. Ask for a source. Ask for a source. I'll tell you. I'll give you an example.
07:56
My daughter was talking with her friend on the phone and her friend added another friend to the phone. I was in the room so I heard this. It was by my kitchen table One evening. We were just, you know, I was cleaning up a little and my daughter was there on the phone with her friends and my daughter commented to the girl who's the friend of the friend and said to her so why don't you just ask God and talk to Hashem? So she said, no, I'm gonna talk to her. So why don't you just ask God and talk to Hashem? So she said, no, I'm going to talk to my rabbi, who is deceased, and he'll ask God.
08:35
So my daughter says what are you talking about? She says, yeah, my spiritual leader, the spiritual guide of my Hasidic sect, was such a holy man. That's something I can relate to. But relating to God is too great. And my daughter's like are you nuts? That's idolatry, that's Christianity. How can you say that? She says no, god is so, so far beyond anything I can comprehend. So I told my daughter, I said Paul, mute it. That's idolatry. You can't do that. That's idolatry. We don't pray to any conduit, through any intermediary. We communicate directly to God. That's the uniqueness of Judaism. Abraham brought to the world monotheism. There is one God and we communicate directly with that God. She goes off mute. And then now, am I right? Prove it. That's what you got to say, prove it.
09:43
And this morning, this morning, as I was preparing for today's class, I found the source for this in the Rambam. And the Rambam writes out clearly the only being that we pray to is the Almighty Praying to any other. That's why we don't even ask. I was mistaken by this. He says don't even ask someone who has passed on to be a representative on your behalf. Don't pray to them. You pray directly to God in their merit, but you pray directly to God. You don't pray to any deceased. We pray directly to God and you don't pray to any deceased. We pray directly to God. And I showed it to my daughter, I showed it to her inside. I said don't just believe it, because I'm your father and I told you so. There's a source for it. The source was written 800 years ago, the Rambam, and you know what happened before the Rambam. The Rambam sourced it in the Talmud, which sources it in the Torah.
10:52
So how good has it gone for our generation to create their new laws of biology, their new laws of what is a man or what is a woman, or whether or not they're interchangeable or whether or not we can start pumping? We have Dr Rosenstock, who is a very well-respected, world-renowned psychiatrist. We asked him here In class, we asked him these hormones, the hormone blockers, that they're doing for these trans children. He says and he's not a right-leaning person at all by any stretch of the imagination. Politically, he said they are murdering these children, he says, because every single cell in your body is either male or female. And if they're blocking those cells and changing those cells, he says, they're going to need to do it for the rest of their life and they're not equipped for it. They're not built with what their body needs to function, with a different set of cells, chromosomes.
12:19
Now, I'm not a professional here, I'm not professing to be one, but what does the Torah say with such simplicity? The Torah says Zahar Unikeva Bara Osam. God in the first chapter of the Torah says I created male and female. There are only two. That's it. You're either one or the other.
12:56
And look at our world. If we were to say something like this to our grandparents, what would they say? They would look at us. Are you out of your mind? What's wrong with you If we said this to our great-grandparents, to our great-great-great-grandparents?
13:13
So we see that in certain areas, we want to connect with the past because we know that there's something right about the past generations. And then, on the other hand, people are trying to modernize in other areas and it's not going well. Technology is great, don't get me wrong, I love technology. Look at how much technology we have right here. I love technology, but the dangers of moving away in our value system, in our ethics, in our morals, from our previous generations, from our past, not looking up to what the Rambam says, not looking up to what the Mishnah says, or the Talmud or the Torah that outlines it so simply, so perfectly. I think that if we stop for a moment, every day, one moment, and said you know what? What would my grandmother may her memory be a blessing what would she have told me to do in this challenge, in this situation? I think we'll get a lot of clarity If we go back to our ancestry and we think about it. How would they have solved this challenge? How would they have dealt with this issue that I'm dealing with? We'll see that it's an incredible compass of morals that sets us on our course properly.
14:55
But when we try to innovate in areas that we should not be innovating in, look, I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I'm not here to say that, oh, the doctors are just doing it for money, which they probably are. They're salesmen like anybody else. They're trying to sell you a car, a Toyota. They're trying to sell you a book at the bookstore and they're trying to sell you medicine and surgery in the doctor's office. It's no different. In the doctor's office, it's no different. I really believe so and I love my doctor. But why are they not the same? They're just as agenda-driven as anybody else who's trying to make a sale. We think, oh, they're the untouchables, they're infallible, they're so for the cause. I don't agree. I think it's patently false. That doesn't make them bad people. That doesn't make every car salesman a snake oil salesman. That doesn't make every person bad in that industry.
16:02
But we put our reliance in education. We put our reliance in now education. Is you're talking to a rabbi, right? We believe we're the people of the book, like, we made up this education thing, right? Just look at us. Look at how the Jewish people, the Rambam, again in his introduction, writes that Moshe had a notebook and Aaron had a notebook. These are the books, people of the book. Jewish people are the most literate people on earth. Throughout our history we're the ones who had libraries and libraries and libraries of what? Not new ideologies, not new philosophies. Torah, god's language, god's world, understanding, meaning, purpose, fulfillment, happiness, pleasure these are all Jewish things. These are all Jewish things that are taught to us. We're trying to create new avenues of pleasure. These are all Jewish things. These are all Jewish things that are taught to us. We're trying to create new avenues of pleasure.
17:08
You think there's something that in the last 5,785 years since Adam and Eve, that they haven't figured out? So again, we're not either trying to be arrogant like we have it all, we understand everything. No, we're not either trying to be arrogant like we have it all we understand everything. No, we have to learn more. But let's not turn our back to our ancestry, let's not turn our backs to our own heritage, to our own heritage.
17:43
You know names. The way we name our children is so important. My oldest son his name is Yisachar Dov, named after my wife's grandfather of blessed memory. Very special man. Now, I particularly do not like the name Yisachar, although it's one of the tribes I love the name Dov, I don't like the name Yisachar. I'm allowed to not like some names, right.
18:11
So I went to my rabbi and I said I know we're gonna name our son Yisachar Dov, I know that's the, but I really I'm not gonna call him Yisachar, I'm gonna call him Dov. So to call him Dov. So what should I do? Should I name him both names when I'm not going to call him the name? He says if you name someone a name and you don't call them by the name, they lose the name. So I said so what do I do? He says and also, if you don't name the full name, it doesn't bring the same merit to the deceased. So I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. So what do we do?
18:46
As my rabbi said, every Shabbos call him by his full name. And indeed when I give out the kiddush to all the children, I call them by their full name. It's the only time in the week that I call them by the full name if they have more than one. And on their passports I wrote their Hebrew name for each of my children. Why I'm trying to hide it? I'm not trying to hide it. I need my son to be named Alan or Jeffrey, you know, just so that they're not going to know that he's Jewish because his name is not Yaakov.
19:28
You see, if you get these phone calls from people from India, they'll say hello, my name is George, right? It's like, really, your name is not George, but they try to pick a name so that you're like, you know. It's like, who are you fooling, right? It's like a friend of mine told me his, his relative is a Hasidic man, brilliant, brilliant man, long side curls, big beard, nice, big yarmulke. Went to law school, aced everything, top of the class, all the awards, he got it, all the titles. He goes to interview by one of these big, big law firms in New York City and they're like, they're blown away.
20:08
This guy is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, he's amazing. But he looks kind of like, you know, he looks like a Hasidic Jew, like a Hasidic Jew. So they asked him and they said you know, we want you, we're ready to hire you, but like, what's with the yarmulke? So he takes off the yarmulke, he has the long side curls, the beard. He says is this going to help? Like it's not going to help, right? So you know what? Are we trying to hide? That? Like people are not going to know that we're Jewish, people are going to know that we're Jewish. But if we stand with pride and we know what it means to be Jewish and we live it with joy, with happiness, as a badge of honor, I'm not trying to hide from my Judaism. On the contrary, like the thousands and thousands, maybe even millions of Jews who, after October 7th, said you know what? I'm going to start keeping Shabbos. I'm going to start looking like a Jew. I'm going to start looking like a Jew. I'm going to start doing things that I've never done. And I've met people like this. They told me as soon as that happened. A guy just last week, two weeks ago, in my class, he said his wife said to him that's it, we're starting to keep Shabbos. He's like what do you mean? We're doing it.
21:24
The October 7th taught the Jewish people you stand with pride in your Judaism, you don't hide from it and we should embrace our ancestry. We have very, very deep, powerful roots. We have a rich heritage. That's what we need to give over to our children, to our grandchildren, that we are the richest nation on earth. We don't hide from it, we don't run away from it. We embrace it, we love it. Hashem should bless us all to have an amazing Shabbos and to learn in each of these portions, in each of these portions that we are studying the. It says, a person should always ask ma'asai yagiyu, ma'asai l'ma'aseh avosai, when are my actions going to reach the level of the actions of our ancestors. We are filled with so many different influences.
22:34
I have to tell you something, okay, do you know? The first time I touched my phone yesterday, four o'clock in the afternoon, now, intentionally in the morning I started. Now I started not to touch it until I come back from synagogue, but then I had to run to a meeting and I totally forgot it, and then I didn't get back home until four o'clock in the afternoon. So I didn't look at my phone one time until four o'clock in the afternoon, and it was probably one of the greatest days ever.
23:08
It's so incredible to live without the influence of outside messaging. We have so much that they're constantly getting so many messages, a message from this, a message from that. Now you have Black Friday, so you have a whole new world of marketing coming at you, whether it be from this deal or from that website, or from this Amazon or from that. So everyone wanting your attention and your money and your focus. It's time for us to realize as a people I'm talking primarily to myself that we have such a rich heritage thousands and thousands of years of wisdom to tap into. It's ours. Let's take it, let's embrace it, let's learn it, let's nurture our lives with it, and let's never ever let go of our rich heritage. Amen.
24:18 - Intro (Announcement)
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