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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.
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe, Director of TORCH, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.
Welcome back, my dear friends, to the Jewish Inspiration Podcast. We'll begin a short and sweet segment talking about Shlosh HaSimeach B'alot, the three days leading up to Shavuot, which begin tomorrow, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, leading up to the incredible two-day holiday of Shavuos. So what is this Shlosh HaSimeach B'alot? The Torah tells us in Exodus 19, the Torah tells us an entire chapter of the preparation
the Jewish people were commanded on before receiving the Torah. Before we're about to have this revelation at Mount Sinai, where God is going to talk to us directly, we're commanded to prepare ourselves. And the Torah tells us how the first day they arrived from Rephidim, and they camped at Sinai, and they were weak from travel. There were no commandments given to them. On the second day, Hashem instructs Moshe to tell the nation, you shall be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
And the Jewish people respond, everything that Hashem has commanded us, we will do. Everything that Hashem commanded us, we will do. And then Moshe is further given instructions to warn the Jewish people not to touch the mountain, not to step on the mountain, and to guard themselves from going to the mountain, and from being holy, and to separate from their wives. And then you have three days of this separation, these three days of preparing themselves for being vessels that are capable of doing the work of the Jewish people.
Capable of taking it all in. So, there are a couple of pieces that are very, very important to discuss when we talk about the Shlosh HaSimeach, both the three days of limitation, the three days of preparing ourselves for this incredible revelation. The first is that there's a day, which is actually today, which is called Yom HaMeiuchas. Yom HaMeiuchas is, call it the day of pedigree or the day of prestige. Now, typically, Yichus, which means family prestige or family pedigree, is something which is very, very powerful.
And our sages tell us, just a disclaimer here, I grew up my entire life where people came over to me, as recently as yesterday, I had someone who came all the way from France. He came to collect a tzedakah and he came to my doorstep and I welcomed him in and talked about what his needs were and gave him a tzedakah, gave him as much as I can help him with. And as he was leaving, he says, I see the name on the door, it says Walby.
He says, there's a great rabbi, Rabbi Walby, Rabbi Shlomo Walby. I said, yes, that's my grandfather. He says, wow, wow, what Yichus, what lineage, what pedigree. And he immediately bends down and says, please bless me. You come from such a rich heritage, I want you to bless me. And the truth is, is that I'm not anything special. Each one of us, we have a pedigree leading us all the way back to our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah, all the great tribes, King David.
I mean, you think of the incredible, incredible leaders of the Jewish people, were all children of theirs. So while we all have those zeros, our sages tell us it's just a bunch of zeros. You have to put that number one in front of it. If you don't put the number one in front of it, it's just a bunch of zeros. And my hope and my prayer is that I merit to not take those zeros in vain, but actually put a number in front of it.
Then the blessing to each of you as well is that being that we are all children and grandchildren of our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, we should not only have those zeros in front of us, but we should put the number in front of those zeros and make those zeros worth something. Now, if we talk about Yom HaMuchas, this day of pedigree, this day of specialty, what is it? If you look on both sides, on the first day they arrived, which is Rosh Chodesh, the
first day of the month, which was this year also on Sunday, that's when they arrived at Mount Sinai. Nothing happened really the next day. But the day after, the third day is when they started that preparation period. So there's nothing really going on. And our sages tell us that because it's a day that's surrounded by good things, it's an unbelievably powerful day. And it's a day we don't say Tachron because it's Yom HaMuchas, it has this day of unbelievable power on both sides.
That's how great the power of having good neighbors. When you have good neighbors, when you have good influences on your side, it leads you to unbelievable places. And we see in this week's Torah portion, when the Jewish people in Parsha's Bamidbar, when the Jewish people were camping around the Mishkan, around the tabernacle, we see that the tribe of Judah, the tribe of Yesachar and Zevulun merited to great, great portions of Torah. Why? Because they were neighbors with Moses and Aaron.
Moses and Aaron were such righteous people. They had such a powerful influence. And we mentioned this on our Parsha Review podcast, that they had such a powerful influence on them because they were the neighbors. On the other hand, we see that Korach was neighbors with different tribes and he influenced those tribes negatively. And those were the tribes that fell into Korach's trap. Because if you have good neighbors, you're influenced positively. If you have bad neighbors, heaven forbid, we can be influenced negatively.
So because this day has such great neighbors, Rosh Chodesh on one side and the beginning of Shlosh HaSimei Agbol on the other side, it's a day that's revered and celebrated to remind us of the importance of a good influence, particularly when we go into the holiday of Shavuot, which is a holiday that is so important and so special because this is the holiday that brings us closer to HaShem and recognizing our relationship to HaShem. It celebrates our anniversary. This is our wedding day.
This is a day where the Jewish people said, Naaseh, we're going to do, and then we're going to listen. So these Shlosh HaSimei Agbola, the three days of restraint that Moshe commanded the Jewish people to observe, he also restrained them from approaching Mount Sinai and not to touch the mountain and also forbidden marital intimacy. So there are a couple of points that I think are important for us to point out here. Number one is that we're about to approach Shavuot.
Shavuot, many of our Hasidic masters teach us that we have, the Mishnah tells us we have four Rosh Hashanahs. We have Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of every year. We have Rosh Hashanah, which is the first day of Nisan, which is the Rosh Hashanah for the months. We have two B'Shvat, which is Rosh Hashanah for the trees. But what is Shavuot? Shavuot is the Rosh Hashanah for our study of Torah. And just like on Rosh Hashanah for the year, we want to demonstrate and put ourselves on
the right foot first and in our perfect behavior so that God says, wow, this is an incredible investment. I'll give you another year. Same too with our Torah study. We want to get started on the right foot. But how do we do that? We need the three days of preparation. It's amazing to see that Shavuot is the name Shavuot, which doesn't really say anything about its holiday. It says about Shavuot, which is the weeks that prepared for this holiday, the seven
weeks that we're counting the Omer. That's what we're celebrating. We're celebrating the process. We're celebrating the preparation. And that's why these three days are so important, because these three days are intense preparation for being vessels to receive the Torah. There's an unbelievable importance stressed in our writings about preparing for Matan Torah, preparing for the receiving of the Torah. The Torah commands us explicitly to prepare. You know, one of my favorite things, you probably have heard it from me multiple times on this
podcast series, you know, in the Dayenu on Pesach, we say, If God had only brought us close to Mount Sinai, but didn't give us the Torah, Dayenu would be enough. One second. Why in the world would we go to Mount Sinai, but not receive the Torah? What is the purpose of going to Mount Sinai? It's like the equivalent of telling our children, come, we're going to go to the ice cream store.
And then once we're at the ice cream, we say, okay, now it's time to go home. We came to the ice cream store. They're like, what do you mean? We didn't come here to just come to the ice cream store. We came to the ice cream store to get ice cream. Why would we go to Mount Sinai to be at Mount Sinai? We'd be at Mount Sinai to receive a Torah. Sages tell us that number one, because receiving the Torah was a secondary benefit.
The receiving of the Torah came as a result of the preparation because the Jewish people prepared so beautifully for this revelation, this revelation where God is going to talk to us directly. The only time in history this ever happened and the Jewish people here are about to receive a revelation from God, they prepared themselves. They got themselves so ready just for that itself is what they went for to Mount Sinai, to make themselves a vessel that's capable of receiving a Torah.
Now, of course, the answer my grandfather gives to this is that the Torah was just a souvenir. We didn't, you don't go on vacation for the souvenir. You go on vacation for the experience, to be there with family or for whatever other relaxing purpose vacation serves. You don't go for the souvenir, but you come back with a souvenir every time. Why do you come back with a souvenir? So that you can recall that great experience, all the people you met. Oh, you remember we went here.
You remember we went there. We saw Niagara Falls. You remember we went, we saw the geysers at the Yellowstone National Park. You buy these little mementos so that they bring you back the memory of your experience. The Torah was just a souvenir that we got with 613 different opportunities to bring back the recollection of the revelation of Mount Sinai. That's what it was about. And our sages tell us that the Torah study these three days has an impact on our entire year.
Our whole year is impacted by the Torah. We study these three days. So I just want to share with you that, you know, our Hasidic masters, they asked their followers not to bother them during these three days because they would lock themselves up in a room and study Torah and pray as much as they can for the success in Torah. And we know this in our morning prayers. We say, Ha'arev no Hashem Elokeinu. Hashem, right after we praise Hashem for giving us the Torah.
We say, and we ask Hashem, La'asok B'divrei Sorah. We want to be immersed in your Torah study. We say, Ha'arev no Hashem, please make it sweet for us. Not only for us, B'tsetzer Einu, B'tsetzer Ei, B'tsetzer Einu, for us, our descendants, our children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, for generation after generation. They should taste that sweetness of your Torah. And that's what we pray for more than ever during these three days and on the holiday of Shavuos. Preparing ourselves to be worthy of the sweetness of the Torah.
There's an old custom that in Jerusalem, the stores would close during these three days. The stores would close. The shopkeepers would all close their stores early. Two o'clock in the afternoon, all the stores would close and all the store owners would go to the synagogues and to the study halls and go learn Torah. Why? Because that's such a special time to prepare and get ourselves ready. At the end of the day, what do we need?
More than we need livelihood, more than we need anything else in our life. We need the Torah to be living within us. You know, in the old Poland, the shuls were filled to capacity two weeks prior to Shavuos. Two weeks prior. Already people were getting in gear. That's it. We have to kick into high gear. Yeah, during the year we get carried with so many different distractions, but we have to remember the main purpose of our lives is to study Torah.
The Geri Rebbe, one of the great Hasidic masters, the Imre Emes, once entered a base medesh in Jerusalem during Shlosh HaSimeh Aguela during these three days prior to Shavuos and said in exasperation, where are the Yidden of the Alter Haim? Where are the Jews of the old Jewish communities in Europe from before the war, when they used to be there, packed into the synagogues. And it's something that, you know, it's something that we should try to do.
We should try to reclaim, we should reestablish this idea of getting back into our study halls, getting back into our shuls and learning for these three days. I can just tell you personally that when I was in yeshiva, a mere 15 years old, a young student, young yeshiva student in Jerusalem, three days before Shavuot, they had a big hung up on the wall and everyone filled out the times that they were committing to. And I saw this the first time when I was there.
I was like, well, what is this? And lucky me, I only had the 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. slot. But basically for the entire 72 hours prior to Shavuos, every guy in the yeshiva committed to a certain couple of hours that they were learning nonstop, no interruption, because that's the way we get into the Rosh Hashanah of Torah, into Shavuos. You know how we get into gear? We spend every waking moment we have preparing ourselves, learning Torah, learning Torah, learning Torah, and becoming that vessel.
There's a story told about some ignoramus who walked into the study hall in Bels in the old shtetl, and he sees people learning with passion and excitement. People are learning Torah. And poor guy, he doesn't know how to learn Torah. He doesn't know what to do. So he just starts crying, banging on the walls. I want to learn Torah. I want to learn Torah. And he goes to the bookshelf, gets a book, and starts learning Torah.
And it turns out that he ended up becoming an unbelievable scholar, such a great scholar that the Belzer Rebbe himself, the Hasidic master himself, would keep this person's book when he published one on his shelf. That's how prominent of a scholar he became. Because our sages tell us more than studying Torah, we have to have the desire to study Torah. You have to have the desire. And wanting to want is also very important.
You know, there's an interesting halacha that tells us that we don't eat matzah prior to Pesach, so that when we do eat matzah, we eat it with an appetite at the seder. We come to the seder with a desire, with an enticing, with a heightened sense of excitement, with a heightened appetite for the eating of matzah. Our sages tell us, why don't we do this for Shavuos as well? Why don't we stop learning Torah two weeks, three weeks before Shavuos, so that we can
come into Shavuos and start learning Torah with an appetite? Our sages answer, because the taste, the flavor of Torah never, ever dissipates. The flavor of Torah continues to grow and continues to grow. The more you learn Torah, the greater the flavor of Torah grows within us. And we should all merit to have that exciting joy and delicious flavor of Torah every single day of our lives. Additionally, we see something so special that in chapter 19 in Exodus, there are 25
verses, and then there's one verse in the following chapter that's 26 verses talking about the preparation the Jewish people put into receiving the Torah. Then there's only 13 verses dealing with the Ten Commandments. There's 26 verses preparing for the Ten Commandments, and 13 verses in the Ten Commandments. So firstly, 26 we know is the name of Hashem. 13 is Hashem Echad, Echad is 13. Alef, Chet, Dalet, 1, 8, and 4 is 13. In order to receive the Torah, double the amount of effort is required in preparation.
We need to prepare double the amount of the actual Ten Commandments. The preparation for a mitzvah, our sages tell us, is greater than the mitzvah itself. And as we know, the Kiddush Haslevi, or B'lei Yitzchak from Bar Ditchav, said that if a person merits on Shavuot and every Shavuot, he will be able to hear the voice of Hashem reverberating, Anochi Hashem Elokecha, I am Hashem your God. Imagine, those sound waves don't disappear. They're still reverberating in the world, and we can all get hold of it.
Get hold of it if we're able to prepare ourselves. How can we not prepare ourselves if we're about to hear the word of Hashem saying, Anochi Hashem Elokecha, as he did 3,300 years ago? So what are some of the practical things that we can do to get the most out of Shavuot and to utilize these three days appropriately? So number one, like we mentioned, learn as much as you can during these three days prior to Shavuot.
Another important thing our sages tell us is to accept upon yourself to learn something special this year. Set on a goal, set on a mission, not too grand, not too big. We know we talked about this many times in the Jewish Inspiration podcast. We don't jump. Take a step, a single step. We don't jump. A realistic step of something we can do and accomplish. Imagine if you come to next year, Shavuot, and you finished an entire chapter of Mishnah
or an entire tractate or even one page of Talmud. If you learn through Rashi on the Chumash, if you learn through one of the commentaries on the Parsha, take one simple Kabbalah. Kabbalah means to accept upon yourself something that is fitting. Fitting that's befitting. It's your size, something that you can handle. You know, there's a guy who once came into a shoe store and they asked him, okay, what size shoe are you? He says, I'm size eight. They say, you know, you're such a great guy.
We're going to give you size 10. We'll give you two extra sizes. So anybody who hears that is going to say, that's crazy. What do you mean two extra sizes? I'm going to swim around. My feet are going to fall right out. It's the same thing as a Kabbalah. Accepting upon yourself something, it has to fit right. If you take something which is too big, it'll just fall right off. That's why in our Torah, when it talks about counting the Omer, what does it say?
It should be accounting for you, meaning it's got to be the right size. It's got to be the right fit. The next thing is very important, that all beginnings are difficult. And whenever you accept something upon yourself, you're going to face difficulty. And in these verses, verse number five in Exodus 19, it says, if you accept now these ordinances, if you accept now to do something, it'll be sweet going further. But you have to know that now is going to be difficult.
Whenever you have new beginnings, you set on a new goal, you're going to lose some weight. Oh, start with all this excitement, and then suddenly it drops. You got to get past that first little dip. It's not going to be easy, but you got to plow forward. You're going to do it. You're going to make it happen. And the next most important thing, and with this we're going to conclude, is that Moshe, we see in the verse in chapter 19 in Exodus, verse number three, it says,
Moshe started going up towards God, and immediately right after that, it says, from the mountain. Sages tell us we have to take the first step. Moshe is teaching us, take a step. Do something. Activate, get involved. The minute we get involved, Hashem says, here, I'm right over here. Come, I'm waiting for you. Hashem wants us close. This whole holiday, this whole festival of the holiday of Shavuos is a time of closeness with Hashem.
It's a time to celebrate the incredible relationship that we built with Hashem. You remember that we said, we will do and we will hear. What does it mean we'll do and we will hear? Let's hear what it has, what this entails. And then we'll see if we want to accept this relationship or not. Anybody who's gotten engaged knows that when the guy gets on his knee and says, will you marry me? The girl doesn't say, well, hold it, hold it, hold it. What does this entail?
What's if you don't make money like you promise? What's if illness befalls us? What's if some other thing happens? I have to know what it entails. Nobody does that. Because if you're really committed to this relationship, it's through thick and thin. And that's why the Jewish people said, Naseh, we're all in. Then later, Nishma. Later on, we'll hear. Whatever comes up, we'll get through it together. That is the first step.
The first step is we're in this together, where we realize that this is about building a relationship with God. And just like for marriage, you got to prepare, so too in our relationship with God. We're about to celebrate this marriage between us, the Jewish people and God. We need to prepare. My dear friends, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to learn with you and to grow with you on these podcasts.
Hopefully you did as much as I did, but I want to share with you one quick story before we finish. A friend of mine just returned from Israel and he called me up when he got back in town. He says, you won't believe this. He says, I went to eat at one of my friend's houses on Shabbos and there was a guest there, a young new student originally from Atlanta, Georgia. And I asked him, where are you from? He told me from Atlanta.
He asked me where I'm from. I told him from Houston. He says, Houston. Do you know Torch? He says, yes, of course I know Torch. He says, well, I'm in Yeshiva today because of the podcasts of Torch. He said, did you ever reach out to them and tell them and tell them they'll be so happy to hear that you took their learning, their Torah that they're sharing with the entire world and it made a difference in your life?
He says, no, I didn't think of reaching out for whatever reason. He says, well, you should. They'll be so happy to hear that. So my dear friends, I'm turning to you, especially this time where we're making commitments in our study of Torah. If these podcasts had any impact in any way in your life, please, there's nothing that will make me happier than to hear from you. Please email me awolbe at Torchweb.org. That's A-W-O-L-B-E at T-O-R-C-H-W-E-B dot O-R-G.
I will be thrilled to hear about your growth because your growth is what inspires me and all of us here at Torch to continue doing what we're doing so that we can continue as a nation to build our relationship with God as much as possible. I look forward to hearing from you and can't wait to share each of your stories in future episodes as well. So thank you and have a beautiful Yom Tov, a beautiful holiday, a beautiful Matan Torah, a beautiful celebration of receiving the Torah.
To find more lessons offered by Torch, please visit Torchpodcasts.com.
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