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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.
Welcome back, everybody, to way number 18. Way number 18 is b'mi'ut ta'anug, with limited pleasure. So all pleasures, all pleasures need to have a limit. I love BBQ potato chips, we discussed this. But if you eat a whole bag of BBQ potato chips, you'll be sick to your stomach. All pleasure needs to have balance. That's the key. The Torah, so you understand, God wants us to enjoy life. God wants us to enjoy life. All of the mitzvahs of the Torah,
oh, you're not allowed to do that. It's a misunderstanding. It's that if you do what God tells you not to do, you're lacking the balance to maximize pleasure. In a Torah life, you will have maximum pleasure. Maximum pleasure. When a person deviates from it and says, I'm going to write it my own way, I'm going to do it my own way, then you're diminishing the maximization of that pleasure. So seeking pleasure for its own sake, and we're talking about any pleasure, food pleasure,
exercise pleasure, any type of physical, any type of spiritual, there needs to be a balance. Something which, again, we discussed in previous ways, and we're going to see more about this now. So seeking pleasure for its own sake is to our spiritual detriment. We aren't beings that are constantly running after pleasure. That's not our goal. That's the Torah's goal, is that everything we do in Judaism fits perfectly into our lives to have the most maximized, pleasurable life.
Body is for the soul like a car is for a driver. So my body is just driving my soul around. It's taking me from place to place. So I need to take care of my body so that my soul can have a house in which it can be transported, go places, do things, help people, right? The soul is living in this body, and the body needs to be healthy, right? So just pleasuring the physical body is taking away from what the soul is here for.
You're getting caught up. You think this is your car. You're just the chauffeur. You're just supposed to be driving me around, right? Don't get caught up in it. You must maintain it so it can serve you, but not too much. There's a very big difference between a person being completely consumed in their physical fulfillment versus a person needs to do what they need to do so that they can continue operating as a messenger for the soul.
Pleasure shouldn't be an end to its own. It should be used as a means to set the stage for the spiritual pleasures. So let me give an example. What is Shabbos? Shabbos is such a special pleasure that the Torah refers to Shabbos as ta'anug, as pleasure. The Torah, if the Torah, God, creator of heaven and earth, in His blueprint of the world says, do you know what pleasure is? Shabbos. V'karata le'shabbat oneg. You shall call Shabbos an oneg.
This is the idea of oneg, of pleasure. And yet, although it's a pleasure, meaning it's a spiritual pleasure, it's also a physical pleasure. We have the delicacies. We bring out the best, finest foods. We have beautiful flowers. We bring out our china, our silverware. Why do we do that? Because that helps enhance the spiritual connection that we have from Shabbos, or that we ought to have from Shabbos. We live in a world of pleasures. We live in a world of,
the whole world is running after pleasures, most of which are pointless pleasures that don't have any type of life to it, past its momentary. For example, someone who uses any type of recreational drugs. So yeah, it might feel good at the moment when the person is under the influence, but the minute you're done, you're craving for more now. And there's no fulfillment. There never comes a time where someone's like, oh, now everything is just perfect and I don't need anything else, right?
No, it's a never-ending thirst for more and more and more and more. That's not a healthy thing. So we need to ensure, if we're investing in pleasures, we have to ensure that we have genuine pleasures. Because God wants us to enjoy this world with real, authentic, genuine pleasures, not fake pleasures. I think most times we use materialism and materialistic pleasures to escape from life. We brought the example of people who are under assorted influences, whatever they may be.
More times than not, they're taking those influences, they're taking those things which alter their state of mind to run away from life. If someone doesn't feel fulfilled, they need something which is artificial and external to try to fill it. See, what is the soul? What is the soul? I've given this example in the past. The soul is like a vacuum cleaner. A vacuum cleaner, what does it want? The sweetest sound for the vacuum cleaner is picking up dirt, like pretzels.
It picks up pretzels. It's a delicious sound. It wants to eat more pretzels. That's what makes the vacuum happy. The vacuum cleaner is very happy when it gets its pretzels. But what does the soul want? The soul wants one thing, connection to God. And if it doesn't get that connection to God, what is this vessel that's holding the soul do? The soul is yearning, give me something. Come on, give me something. Go to a torch class.
No, come on, we're not gonna go to torch class here. Another rabbi, tell us about it. Come on, right? Give me something exciting. Okay, so we'll have some pizza and a Coke. That's not fulfilling enough. Let's go to a movie. You go to a movie, and then what? It's not either fulfilling enough. You try from one small pleasure to another bigger pleasure, to another bigger pleasure, to another bigger pleasure, till person can do the craziest things
and still not feel that fulfillment. The soul is a never-ending vacuum cleaner for spirituality. That machine is constantly sucking in, trying to get a spiritual experience, trying to get a connection with reality. If someone is devoid of that fulfillment, of that spirituality, that's when they go to these addictions. They're searching for something. They're not finding it in their day-to-day life. God forbid, right? We should never know of such things, but they resort to these types of things that become very addictive,
and then they can't get out of it because they need more, and they need more, they need more, and they're never satiated from it. Dependence and reliance on luxury can be very damaging. I remember when I bought my first car. I was moved back from Israel, and now I'm getting a real job as a rabbi in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and I need a car. And I called every Toyota dealership. I'm looking for a used Toyota Camry, and this is my budget,
and nobody has a car. There's not a car available. So I get a phone call from a friend of mine. He says, you told me you were looking for a car, for a Toyota Camry. He says, guess what? There's a Lexus that just came up. Remember that Lexus, right? I had it for like 15 years, right? So there's a Lexus. It's like a Camry, but it's a Lexus, okay? And it's in mint condition, very, very, very, very low miles.
It's from an elderly woman, and it's a bargain of a price. It really was. So he says, but you have to take it tonight. You take it tomorrow. Once it goes in the shop, we're gonna do a whole evaluation, how much it's worth, and take it right now. This is the price. Take it, cash go. So I went down there. I tried to turn on the engine. It was like a brand new car. It was a 1981, so it's 13 years old
at the time that I bought it. And I gave him the money. So I was very, very happy with my purchase, but growing up in the home that I grew up in, a very non-materialistic world, coming, pulling up with a Lexus is not exactly the idea of a modest lifestyle. So my parents, my father was livid. What type of child did I raise, right? No, he was like really upset. So I asked my brother-in-law, my brother-in-law is like,
I was like, what are you doing? Why is everyone so upset? I was looking for a car. I couldn't find the car. This is the only one that was available. It was a good deal. I bought it and go buy. See, he said a very important point. It was worth it for this lesson. He said, because when people get used to a certain level of luxury, it's very hard for them to go down. My next car after that was a station wagon.
So it's okay, don't worry, okay? We took a couple of steps down. But either way, when people get used to a certain level of luxury, it's very difficult to lower yourself after that. And the world we're in is dependent and reliant on their luxuries, right? Tell me someone who's driving their beautiful new Tesla that they're gonna go back to a Camry. It's not happening, right? So it's okay, you can enjoy it. You can enjoy it. God wants us to enjoy these things,
but don't become dependent on it. The minute you become dependent is the minute you lose. Because now, I need to, I have to have it. Okay, that's dangerous. It was a guy, an article I read several years ago, of an individual who wanted to be buried in his Bentley. And you see him, instead of being in a casket, you see a crane burying his Bentley with him sitting in the driver's seat. They had a very, very big grave site for him.
I'm not kidding you. This is real, you can look it up. Look it up on your Google and you'll find it there. It's a crazy thing. That's how people become so addicted to their standard of materialism that they can't let go. So really, it's a tragic thing. Use worldly pleasures to maximize life, not to limit it. Don't limit your life. Maximize it. You have an opportunity, enjoy it, but don't allow it to limit you. To maximize every physical pleasure
ensure that it has substance behind it. Ensure that it has substance behind it. These are such fundamental things. Yeah, you know what? You have a nice car, great. Do mitzvahs with it. Do mitzvahs with it. Go visit people. Someone needs a car, let them borrow it. Not my fancy Jaguar. No, no. Is it, who's serving who? That's, you gotta remember. Who's serving who? Is it serving me or am I serving it? It really is an astonishing thing.
My neighbor, he bought a brand new pickup truck. It was a gorgeous, beautiful Chevy Silverado. It was beautiful. He came to me, knocked on my door, and he said to me, till now I didn't have such a nice car, but now I just bought a new car. I need you to start trimming the trees that are hanging over onto my driveway because I don't want it to hit the top of my car. I had my gardener trim the trees
so that it did not interfere with his fancy schmancy truck. So, that's fine. Probably every other day, maybe every day, was waxing that car. Was like with a toothpick, he might have gone over a bump, like getting everything out of the treads of the tires. So my question is like this. What was the purpose of the car? To serve him, to take him from place to place. And meanwhile, he's serving it. And that's the point I'm trying to make.
Yeah, of course you're supposed to respect and take care of your possessions. In fact, the Talmud talks about how the sages are so careful with every penny. They're so careful with every penny. Spend money on a car, take good care of it, but don't become the servant to it. It has to be the servant to you. Having our priorities in the right place. Before one prays that Torah enters him, this is the Tanah de Beliau, one of the great Tanaic sages says,
before one prays that Torah enter him, let him pray that delicacies of the world do not enter his intestines. Before you, right? Before you want spirituality to be absorbed in your body, be very cautious that the materialism of this world doesn't get absorbed in your body first. Because once it does, there's going to be this conflict. So what's the rule about excessive materialism? The rule is like this. Every word in Hebrew means something.
It says that Mashiach is going to come riding on a donkey. What is a donkey in Hebrew? Hamor. Hamor is the word for donkey. What is the root of the word hamor? Donkey. Materialism. Chomer. The Sages teach us something spectacular. You know what it means when it says Mashiach is going to come riding on a donkey? It means not a donkey. Doesn't need a donkey. He can have a Bentley, right? He can have a private jet.
He doesn't need a donkey. He's going to show us how to be in control of materialism. Understand? He's going to show us how to be in control of materialism. When materialism doesn't control us, how many times are we in a challenge where there's something that we want? That new phone, that new iPhone, or that new computer. I have to get it. I have to, I have to. People become crazy because someone cut their place on the line. For what?
So you wait 10 minutes to get your phone. Big deal. No. People become so possessed by their desire for the materialism. Who's in control of who? Are they in control of the iPhone? Who's the iPhone in control of them? So to waste anything in life is foolish. To waste pleasure is absurd. And our sages don't want us to waste any pleasure. They don't want us to waste opportunities, but it's got to be done in the right way.
The bottom line of everything we said as a summary is don't retreat from life. Elevate it. Don't distance yourself. Oh, I'm not going to enjoy anything. I'm not, I don't want to be indulged. No, no, no. Take the pledges that you have. Take the gifts that God's given you and elevate them. Elevate those experiences. Make yourself holier. All right, so that concludes way number 18 of this series.