Parsha Review Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

00:00 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
Welcome back everybody to the Parsha Review. This week's Parsha is Parsha's Lech Lecha. It is the third portion in the book of Genesis and also the third portion in the entire Torah. We have 126 verses, 1,686 words, 6,336 letters and, as we repeat every single week, it is critical for us to remember that there's not an extra letter in the Torah, not an extra verse in the Torah, not an extra word in the Torah. Every letter is critically important and we need to study. If you look, there are books and books and books and books about understanding the Torah, about every word, every letter, every verse. Why is it there? Why do we need it? Why does it need to have this extra letter or why is it lacking? A letter that should be there. There's always a teaching, there's always a lesson for it. That is in. God's divine wisdom placed it into the Torah exactly the way it is, and our job is to go after the reasoning. What's behind it? There's one mitzvah in this week's Parsha and that's a performative mitzvah that every male should be circumcised at eight days. That's an obligation on the father or mother, but if they aren't available to do it, it's a mitzvah on the community to circumcise that male baby. And if the child reaches age 13 and hasn't been circumcised, the obligation is on him himself to get himself circumcised. But the mitzvah is at eight days.

01:43
So if you remember, in last week's Torah portion we concluded with the birth of Abraham, the marriage of Abraham to Sarah or Sarai and Avram at year 1948. From Adam and Eve we said we start counting from Adam, the creation of Adam and Eve. He discovers Hashem by observing the world. He sees the trees, he sees the plant, he sees the vegetation, he sees the sunrise and the sunset. He said there has to be a Creator. You can't have such a perfect world and there not be a Creator.

02:20
Just to give you an example, imagine we're driving out to West Texas and we're in middle of the highway and there's nothing on any side of us. It's just fields, empty fields, empty desert land. And we're just driving, we decide to veer off the road, go onto some rough terrain and we drive about five miles into no man's land and suddenly you see a table set in white tablecloth, with beautiful cutlery and beautiful dishes, all set with fresh juice on the table and smoking hot brisket kosher of course and it's all there, set waiting for you. So you ask is anybody here? Is anybody here? Someone comes out from afar and they say, oh, that just landed from heaven, it just descended from the heavens and it just evolved into a table and a setting. You'd say this guy's crazy, he's pulling some trick on me, because we all know that that doesn't make any sense. Oh, but one second. But to have a world which is so perfect, with all of the constellations and the galaxies and the planets and everything that works in our world so perfectly, oh, that just evolved, that just happened. And for our atoms, for our cells in our body to be as perfect as they are, for our eyesight to work, for our nose, for our mouth, for our ears, for our brains to be used oh, that's just evolved from apes. Give me a break.

04:06
Abraham looked at this world and he said it is impossible for this world to just be. It has to be that there's a creator, there's a designer, there's someone who put this together. Abraham came to that clarity himself and then he merits that. Hashem appears to him. The relationship is built and is tested. We know that every relationship can be built, but it is tested. It's tested through trying times, it's tested through challenges, it's tested through misunderstandings.

04:40
So the first test that Abraham has is where God tells him lech, lecha, go, leave your home, leave your father's home, leave the place you grew up in. What do you mean? This is, this is what I know. I was, I was born here. What do you just leave? Where are we going to? Oh, ella, earths are echo to the land that I will show you. Oh, that takes a tremendous amount of trust. In a test of trust, hashem commands Avram To leave his homeland and to travel to the land that I will show you. And we are. Hashem will make him into a great nation. I shall promises the as-shol, the go-god, all I will make you into a, into a great nation.

05:24
Avram leaves with Sarai, lotus nephew, and all of the converts, all of the people that he brought under the wings of Hashem, all Under the, the, the presence of Hashem. He walked around and he said to people come, come in our home. And they come into the house and they're like, wow, is a free soup kitchen, is like the first, first soup kitchen. And After they'd leave, they're like, okay, you know, where do I leave a tip? Or how do I pay for this meal? He's like, no, no, no, no, you're paying me. It's not for me, it's from Hashem. They're like what, hashem? What are you talking about? He says, yeah, there's a creator of heaven, earth. And he'd start the whole lecture. You know he was the, the Torah outreach resource center of Haran, right, that's where they were living at the time, that's torch of that, of those days of Abraham. And he would start teaching them about Torah and he'd start teaching them about God and he would Influence them into recognizing that there's a creator. And they're like oh, my goodness, how do I get into this relationship with God? He says come, let's convert. And he would convert people. He was the only one who proselytized, so to speak. He was the only missionary in Jewish history, the only one in Jewish history. And All of those converts came with him, his wife and his nephew, lot.

06:42
Upon reaching Qanon, which later becomes erud, israel, hashem promises Avram. He says look at this land. The land is for your descendants, it's for, it's for Abraham and his descendants. Those who bless you will be blessed and those who curse you will be cursed. Unbelievable, we see this in our world today. Those who bless the Jewish people are blessed. Those who curse the Jewish people are cursed. It's, it's really remarkable to see this blessing coming to fruition every single day. So we have the descent to Egypt.

07:19
What happens? A famine ensues and Avram is forced to relocate to Egypt to find food. Recognizing the Egyptians may kill him for Sarai's beauty, sarai's his wife. He says to her Sarai, tell them, you're my sister. Like this, they won't kill you to marry you. If I'm your sister, they can. You know, they can abduct you as well. Sure enough, sorry is taken.

07:44
It takes something, it takes some wisdom for Abraham to recognize how cruel these people were in Egypt, how immoral they were. As Soon as they see a beautiful woman, they say quickly, bring this beautiful woman to the king. And sure enough, she is taken to Pharaoh. Hashem afflicts Pharaoh and his whole corporation with a terrible plague of illnesses and she is released untouched. He goes to Abraham. It's as why didn't you tell me? Why did he just don't go to women and just say assume that they're gonna be your wife because they're beautiful.

08:22
And Avram returns to the land of Kanan, to Erotsi Srol, with great wealth. They give him all of these gifts and they say here, take it. We see something unique about Abraham and we mentioned this last week when we talked about Noah. We see something unique about Abraham, and that is he felt a sense of responsibility for his community. He felt a responsibility for others. Avram decided to part ways with his nephew, lot, to avoid future quarrels over grazing rights. Lot chooses to live in the rich, evil city of Sedom, in the fertile plain of the Jordan River.

09:03
Hashem repeats his promise to Avram and says I'm going to make your descendants great like the stars in the sky and Like the this, the sand at the beach. You ever wonder these are two opposites the stars you look up, the sand you look down. Which one are the Jews gonna be? Are we gonna be like the stars or we're gonna be like the sand at the beach? Or say just tell us. That depends on you. If you bring light to the world, people will look up at you like they do to the stars. But if you're lowly and people will trample on you like the sand by the beach and It'll be like a nuisance. I personally don't really like going to the beach because you get sand all over the place, all over the car, all over your clothes. Everywhere is like. I just don't enjoy it. You know what? That's perhaps how people feel sometimes about Jews who don't act properly. It's like they're everywhere and then they start saying how the Jews are in control of the media and Jews of control in a very derogatory way. We need to be a light to the nations. We need to be like the stars that are bright, that are shining, and then people will look up to us.

10:19
War breaks out between the kings of the region and Saddam is defeated. The load has taken captive. Abraham hears about this and, together with a handful of converts, avram rescues load and overpowering superior forces, and doesn't touch their spoils. The king of Sodom says to Abraham he says here, take of all of the loot, take of all of the spoils. And Abraham says I won't take even of a string of their shoelaces, I don't want anything from them. That's a recognition, a small recognition. Abraham realized that everything is from Hashem. There is nothing that I can attain, nothing that I can own without it being the will of Hashem. And he's here demonstrating that. He recognizes that everything he's received till now, everything that he will receive from now, is from Hashem and he doesn't need to go out and worry about oh, I'm going to take the spoils and I'm going to take their furniture and I'm going to take their cars, don't need to take anything.

11:26
And now Abraham works to deepen the relationship with the Almighty God promises. He says count the stars. Can you count them? He says your descendants will be like them. And God reveals the prophecy of the Egyptian slavery and the subsequent freedom from that slavery and wealth. And God says that it's going to be 400 years. We know that it wasn't 400 years, it was only 210 years of slavery. Our sages tell us it was the 210 years that the Jewish people experienced in Egypt in slavery was equivalent to 400 years, because of how treacherous that experience was. Eretz Yisrael is promised as well again, the irrevocable inheritance for the Jewish people. And it's incredible that today we see that exact same struggle that was back then. With whose land is this holy land? It's not just the land. Nobody's fighting over Kenya, nobody's fighting over India. Everyone is fighting over the holy land Eretz Yisrael.

12:34
Sarah is barren, and barren we mentioned last week doesn't mean that she just wasn't able to have a child. She wasn't capable of having a child. She didn't have the actual wherewithal to become pregnant, she didn't have the womb, she didn't have what was necessary for a woman to be capable of becoming pregnant. And she gives Hagar, her maiden, to Abraham, her husband, and is immediately impregnated. Sarah dislikes Hagar's arrogance and chases her away to later return. And then Yishmael, defined by the Torah as a maniac, a wild beast, is born. It's very interesting that that definition. There are many reasons why that's the title given to Yishmael. I recommend that you go look at it in the Torah, read the commentaries and see what that definition really means.

13:35
And then we see about the eternal divine covenant between Hashem and Abraham. Hashem commands circumcision upon Avram, who at the time was 99 years old, and Yishmael, who was 13 years old, and all of the future males. At eight days old, hashem changes Avram's name to Avraham and here on in in the Torah his name is no longer Avram, it's Avraham with a hei. And because he's Av Lahamon Goyim, he is the father to the many nations. And Sarah her name is changed to Sarah, from a Yud to a hei, and that Yud was later given to Yehoshua. It was from Hosea, it became Yehoshua. He got that Yud from Sarah. Hashem promises Avraham a son, yitzchak, despite Avraham being 99 years old and Sarah 90. And if anyone said today that a 90 year old woman was going to get pregnant from her 99 year old husband and they were going to have a child. They'd laugh, they'd laugh, and that's exactly what Sarah did and which is why she named her son Yitzchak, which means to laugh. We'll see that in next week's Torah portion. On that very day, avram circumcises himself, yishmael and his entire household All of those converts. Everybody got circumcised that day.

15:05
There's a couple of very important things that we need to discuss. Number one is that we see the covenant is a covenant that's in the flesh. You need to have a constant reminder of that covenant. Yeah, you know, sometimes people can have a string around their finger to remember something. Why? Because you need to have something physical to remind you. We need to have, sometimes, something that we put into action immediately. Avram does that. Hashem suggests this covenant. The covenant is going to be in the flesh, that wherever you go, whenever you're around anywhere in the world, this covenant is always with you. It's a constant for every Jewish boy to always remember the relationship with Hashem. Now, avram recognized God at about 52 years after he was born. He was born in 1948. So that year 2000 from Adam is when Avram about recognized Hashem.

16:15
Our sages tell us that the world, this world that we're living in right now will last 6000 years. We're right now in 5783. That means there's only another 217 years to go At most. If Mashiach doesn't come before then, that's it. The world we're living in will last only 6000 years, divided into three sets of 2000. The first set of 2000 is chaos, and that we know. We have Adam and Eve, we have Canaan Abel, we have the flood of Noach, we have the Tower of Babel. It's total chaos. What's going on the second 2000 years is discovery, where God is being discovered by mankind, and you have a tremendous, tremendous explosion of discovery of Hashem. And then you have the last is the struggle of implementing that godliness into our life. And that's the world, the 2000 years that we're in right now.

17:24
It's interesting that the Talmud and the Mishnah were all written in the last of the 2000 years and the Torah was given in the second 2000 years. So we have Abraham, isaac, jacob, the tribes, we have Moshe, we have Aaron, we have the Temple, the Tabernacle, we have the Jewish people entering into the land of Israel, we have Joshua, we have all the prophets, and then we get all the way till the end of those 2000 years when we start with the Mishnah. We write down the Mishnah because we're in a different stage of the world's existence. We're now. We're going to need to have a physical book to learn from. We're not going to be able to just relate from father to son, from rabbi to student. We're going to have something concrete that we can look at and we can study the Mishnah and we can study the Talmud and we can study the Midrash and the Zohar and the Kabbalah and all of the Halacha. We're going to need to have something physical to help us through that struggle.

18:24
Hashem loves our prayers, particularly the prayers of the righteous, and our sages tell us the reason why Sarah, rebecca, rachel, hannah were all barren, they were not capable of having children, is because God wanted their prayers. He desired their prayers on a very simple level of understanding. Imagine a child, a little child, who talks very cutely and you know they want a lullipop and they say havalala. Right, he say, say it again, just say it one more time. Right, I'll give you the lullip, just say it one more time. What are you torturing the kid? No, I'm not torturing, I just want to hear it again. I want to hear it again. Hashem loves the prayers of the righteous. So he takes away sometimes so that he hears those prayers again, and then he gives them their desire.

19:22
Another amazing teaching that we see is that choose good neighbors. You will be influenced by your environment. Abraham didn't like Lot and his tricky behavior. So he gets. He says you know what? Let's just agree to disagree. You go your way, I go my way. Let not our, our shepherds quarrel, let not our, you know possessions get intermingled. You go your way, I'll go my way. But then Lot chooses a bad neighbor again, in that he goes to Sedom. And guess what's going to happen in Sedom? You're going to be influenced by your environment and Abraham needs to save him, as we'll see in next week's Torah portion.

20:06
Now there's a question that's an age-old question why do bad things happen to good people? Why do challenges come to good people? And it's a very it's an age old question and the only way to address this is to realize and to recognize that first, every person is in this world for a mission. No one is here for a picnic. We're not. Life is not a picnic. We're not here to just be in an amusement park for the rest of our lives. Life has challenges. Why? Because God wants to bring out the best in us. The best version of ourselves will only come through challenges. When God loves a person, he says, oh, I'm gonna bring them that challenge so that it can bring out the beauty in them, it can bring out the greatness in them. To the people who are wicked, they'll get all of their reward in this world. They'll get everything, all their payment here in this world. But those who are righteous, they will get extra reward in the world to come for that suffering.

21:05
We see that with regard to Sarah. She had her challenges in this world and got her reward, not only in this world with her son Isaac, but she also got it in the world to come. This is something we need to see, a big picture. An example for it is you know, everybody who earns a paycheck is gifted, is gifted. The Almighty has blessed them with their income. But there are those who decide that it's better for me to not use all of that income that I earned and use it and spend it. I'm gonna save it for later. Oh, that's painful. To save it. No one wants to put away money in their 401k, in their IRA. Invest for the future so that in retirement I'll have it. So some people take that painful experience, so to speak, so that they can benefit more later. That's the same thing with pain and suffering in this world. There are some people who have that pain in this world so that they can get the reward later. Through those challenges keeping their faith, keeping their emunah, having trust in Hashem, their bitachon they're rewarded for that in the future. It's an investment for the future.

22:18
Now we see that Sarah is disappointed in Abraham's lack of prayer for her too. Every person has the power to pray and you can pray. We see that, the prayer that we have every single day, the amida. What are we supposed to think before we take the three steps forward? In our amida? We're supposed to accept upon ourselves love for every single Jew. You know why? Because in the prayer we're going to be praying for every single Jew, we don't just pray for ourselves. You have much greater power when you pray on behalf of others, when you don't just think about yourself. Well, this is what I need. I want to win that lottery, I want to get a good job.

23:02
The Talmud tells us that when you pray on behalf of someone else, you will benefit first, and the commentaries ask one second, so everyone's just going to go around. Oh, is someone doing? You know anybody who has any illness that's similar to mine? I'm just going to pray for them and then I'll get healed. First, that's a trick. Talmud says go ahead, let's see the love you have for another person and pray for them, and you'll merit indeed, as a reward, that you benefit. First Pray for someone else. That's why in our prayers, everything is in a plural. We don't just pray for ourselves, for our own health. We don't just pray for our own wisdom. We don't just pray for our own livelihood. We don't just pray for our own justice, we pray for everyone's. We don't pray only pray for our own repentance, we pray for everyone's repentance.

23:54
The groundwork for the Jews and the nations of the world are being placed here. What Abraham is doing is he's laying the groundwork for all the Jewish people in the future and he's held accountable on a very high level for his mistakes. We see we'll see next week's Torah portion that Abraham himself doesn't serve the angels the water, god says. Your descendants are not either going to get water directly from me. They're gonna have to get it through a conduit, through a messenger. They get it through the rock through Miriam's. Well, they're not gonna get it direct. You didn't serve your guests directly. Your children are not gonna get water directly when they're in the desert. We're held to a higher standard. The older we are, the more responsible we need to be, the more accountable we are.

24:41
And then the last point here. The last last point here is that there's a power in a name the name. It means so much. We discussed this last week and the week before the power in a name. Abraham became his name, sarah became her name, and the Torah emphasizes the distinction between their previous name and their new name because it's a new identity. Now that they made a covenant with the Almighty, they became different people. The names are so important. If someone has a Jewish name, it's important to use your Jewish name because it's your identity.

25:22
Sadly, I can't even tell you how many times I'm involved with life cycle events and I ask people what's your Hebrew name, what's your father or your mother's Hebrew name? What's your grandfather's Hebrew name, your grandmother's Hebrew name? They can't tell me Most of the time. They can't tell me half of those. Get to know it. Do some family research. Get to know who your parents, what their name were in Hebrew, in English, how they wrote it. Get to know what your grandparents' names were and get to know your own name, know your Hebrew name. You can use it every once in a while.

25:56
I'll just share with you quickly that when my son was born, my wife and I chose to name him after her grandfather. But he had two names, one of which we knew we loved and we would call him by that name, but one which we didn't really like so much. And I went to my rabbi and I said can I just name him one of those names? I'm not going to ever call him by the second name, so why even give him that name? My rabbi said that it's a merit to the deceased when you name him after their full name and it wouldn't be the merit if you just named half the name. So I said fine, so what do I do? I'm not going to call him the name. If you don't call someone by their Hebrew name, they lose the name. He said try to remember within every 30 days to call them by their full name.

26:47
So what I do, my custom is that every Friday night, when I give out the kiddish, and every Shabbos, when I give out the kiddish and the Chala. I call them by their full name and that's the one time a week that I call them by their full name. I have several children that have double names that are not used regularly Every Shabbos. It is when I give them their kiddish every Friday night and Shabbos morning, and when I give them their Chala, after we say the Hamotsi, I call them all by their full names and that's the one time, so that they maintain their name. It's important. Their names, every person's name is so powerful, it's so valuable. Use it. Have a great Shabbos, my dear friends, and thank you so much for joining us for this weekly Parsha review.