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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 everybody to way number 24. Way number 24 is Be'munath Chachamim, believe in the wise man, value wisdom. In way number 10, we spoke about having a teacher, having someone that you learn from. But now we're talking about the whole concept of wisdom. We need to value wisdom, wisdom in every area of life, by the way. It's an interesting thing. It says that Torah bagayim al tamim, the Gentiles don't have Torah, Chachamim bagayim tamim, wisdom by the Gentiles, they do have, have tremendous wisdom, Torah they don't.
That's the Jewish job. Wisdom they have plenty of, and we need to seek out wisdom, all wisdom. King Solomon says, if you desire wisdom like money and buried treasures, then you will find it. You need to seek out wisdom. The world today is not different than what it was a thousand years ago. Even though they didn't have smartphones then, they didn't have Netflix and didn't have these distractions on YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and TikTok and all the other social media platforms.
But they had other forms of distractions and King Solomon's creed from Proverbs remains the same. You need to seek out wisdom because the distractions are plenty. Seek true wisdom. To gain wisdom, the first step is to decide that what you want out of life is truth and that you will not settle for anything less. Search for wisdom. Don't wait to bump into it. Maybe one day, oh, one day I'll arrive at wisdom. That doesn't work.
You know, we said previously, asei l'chorav, make for yourself a rabbi, make for yourself a teacher. As our sages tell us, this is not only a teacher in Torah. Have someone who will be your teacher when it comes to technology. Have someone who will be your teacher when it comes to parenting. Have someone who will be your teacher when it comes to marriage. Have someone who will be your teacher when it comes to any topic that you're looking for.
Seek out someone who's wise in that area, someone who understands, someone who's a skilled educator who can transmit the information properly. Seek out someone like that and make them your rabbi. My rabbi of blessed memory of Beryl Eisenstein, when we learned in the yeshiva, every single day there was a little sheet on the board, on the board, on the bulletin board at the entrance of the study hall. And it was the mare makomos, it was the source sheet for what the class was going to be on
that day. So why do we need to learn the source sheet before the class? Because what he was trying to teach us and what every rabbi should be doing is, this is the source material, go through it and tell me what I'm going to, how I'm going to see this, how I'm going to learn this. Learn how to think like a scholar. That's what he was trying to teach us. He would give us all these sources, we would learn the Talmud and then we'd say, okay,
now look at this Rashi and look at this Tosfat commentary and then look at the Rashba and the Ritva and the Marsha and we'd look at all these commentators on the Talmud and try to come up with what's the problem, what's going on here, what is he trying to bring out? How do we think like a Torah scholar? How do we think like a Talmud Chacham? You know, my rabbi today, Rabbi Yitzchak Berkowitz and Rav Moshe Weiss and Rav Moshe Feinstein
of blessed memory, they took the Torah and applied it to modern technology, to modern challenges. Questions of AI, artificial intelligence, are real halachic questions. You know, self-driving cars have pre-programmed that if there are two people that are going to get hit by the car, they in a split second determine which one should be hit. One is older, one is younger. One is in a safer car, one is in a less safe car. These are determinations that are pre-algorithmized.
The algorithm is there already, pre-embedded into these AI devices, into these self-driving cars. But halachically, we have to know the answer. What's the right thing? What's the wrong thing? There's never a good solution in such a case. But that's a very deep halachic question. You know, there was a story told once, someone was going to have a brain surgery in Tel Aviv. He tells the doctor, if you don't mind, I just need to ask my rabbi prior to you operating on my brain.
He says, fine, go ask whoever you want. So he goes to the rabbi, and the rabbi listens carefully, and he takes out a napkin, and he draws on the napkin a diagram, and gives it back to the patient. He says, tell the doctor that he should only operate in this way. The next day, he comes to the surgeon, and he brings him the diagram from the Hazon Ish. This is in the early, in the 1940s. The surgeon looks at it, and he couldn't believe his eyes.
He said, who drew this picture? He said, the rabbi from Nabarach that I told you I was going to ask. He says, it can't be. Is he a physician? No. He says, I need to meet this rabbi. And indeed, he followed what the Hazon Ish said, and the operation was very successful. And from that day on, the surgeon never operated without first consulting with the Hazon Ish. Now, the Hazon Ish was not a surgeon. So how did he know?
Because everything, all wisdom is in the Torah. And if you know how to properly learn and understand Torah, you'll know all of medicine. You'll know all of science. You'll know all of nutrition. You'll know everything that you need to know about this world, in this modern world. We have the power of a direct and uninterrupted transmission from Moses at Mount Sinai all the way to us today. Those of you who have been in our classroom have seen the unbroken chain of Torah transmission
from Moses all the way, from Moses receiving it from God at Mount Sinai all the way to us learning, Torah rabbis and Torah students learning together. There's a direct transmission which is uninterrupted. Your parents are a fountain of wisdom. Listen well to other people. It's a good practice for listening to Hashem. You know, information center, when you go to a mall, you look, oh, where's that store? You find, look for that eye, the white eye and the blue circle, right?
You look for that symbol and you know where the information desk is. Do you know what information desk means to Jewish people? Find someone who's over 70 years old. Someone who's over 70 has a tremendous amount of life experience. There's a lot that they can teach you. Be bothered by ignorance and you'll go looking for wisdom. If you get annoyed at those time-wasting, you know, little short videos that they present on YouTube or Facebook and just distracting our time, these memes, wasting our time.
If you get frustrated by it, you'll hopefully be motivated to invest more time in wisdom. Investing wisdom means you'll take it seriously and make a sincere effort to acquire it. Before you know anything else, you've got to know what you're living for. Wise people know, listen to them. If you don't know what you're ready to die for, you haven't begun living. We've said this so many times. Know what you're ready to die for. What are you ready to die for?
Are you ready to die for your job, for your career? So why do you live for your career? Are you ready to die for your children? So why don't you live for your children? Spend that extra time. I try to take this lesson to heart myself, having said this so many times. So just tonight, after we finished dinner, my son says to me, Abba, can we have a baseball catch? Now I'm tired. I had a long day.
I'm really not in the mood of having a baseball catch. But I know how important it is to my son. I know how important it is for our relationship, for our friendship, for our love. And we had a 20-minute catch, throwing the baseball back and forth. And then I got in the car and came to teach class here tonight. Because I want to live for what's important. If I'm willing to die for my family, am I willing to live for my family?
If you're Jewish, it makes sense to look into Judaism as a source for wisdom. Jews should look at Judaism because Judaism is the greatest source of all wisdom. We are in Generation I. Everything is about me. The greatest mistake of our generation is thinking that we are the greatest. Look at someone else who's wiser and get the wisdom from them. The greatest power in the world is knowledge. There are people in this world who have wisdom and understanding.
Find them, believe in them, and allow their wisdom to enter your soul. Thank you so much. That concludes way number 24.