Parsha Review Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

00:03 - Intro (Announcement)
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast.

00:12 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
All right, good morning everybody. Good beautiful Tuesday morning here in Houston, texas. Today we are going to discuss this week's Parsha, parsha Tzazinu Now, although today is Tuesday and we are going to have tomorrow evening Yom Kippur, kol Nidre, and then, you know, we start the fast at approximately 6.45 in the evening and then we go for 25 hours into a new realm of existence. We go into a new place of unbelievable purity, where we remove ourselves physically from the world of trappings, of limitations, and we go to a world of unlimited potential, the world of Teshuva. And it's amazing that this week's Torah portion, which is going to be read on Shabbos, always falls out in this time, usually right after Rosh Hashanah. I mean, yeah, every year it's right after Rosh Hashanah, sometimes right after Yom Kippur, right after Rosh Hashanah, right after Yom Kippur. It's an incredible, incredible portion. It's really a song, ha'azinu, where the Jewish people are singing a song about their future, and this is all prophecy that's being foretold.

01:30
But one of the verses here which is very, very interesting is Mezei Rav Ulochumei Reshef V'Ketev Meriri V'Shen Beheimos Ashalach Bam Im Hamas, zochalei Afar, bloating of famine, consumed by fever. This is obviously referring to the enemies of the Jewish people, with the venom of those that slither in the dust. So this is referring to the enemies of the Jewish people that will be hurt because of the afflictions they bring upon the Jewish people. There's something for the UN to know as well. We mentioned right before we went on air about what's going to be with this, uh, this ultimatum, so to speak not ultimatum, but this agreement that was made by so many nations and israel and the united states about hamas and and gaza. So you know, we ask what's going to be. Okay, we don't get into, uh, political conversations here in our class, but the torah says very clearly what happens to those who harm the Jewish people. But I want to share with you a totally different perspective of understanding this verse and has nothing to do with our enemies in physical, but rather our enemies in spiritual, and that is our yetzahara, our demons, our enslavement to our impulse.

03:09
And our sages tell us in the Talmud Omer, rabbi Yitzchak, anyone who recites the bedtime Shema, anyone who recites the bedtime Shema, all of the evil forces just wash away from him. They just wash away. And he brings this verse from our. Thank you so much. He brings this verse from this week's parasha that what happens, all of the mazikim, all of those who can afflict pain, spiritual pain, on a person, all of them just fly away. So we see, our sages tell us in great detail the importance of the bedtime shema. The bedtime shema, the bedtime Shema is so incredibly important. But there's an obvious question we need to ask. We know the Torah tells us that we should recite the Shema every morning and evening. So we do so. Every morning we go to synagogue, morning services Shacharis and we recite the Shema. In the evening, we have the Mariv or the Arvit prayer and we recite the Shema. In the evening, we have the Mariv or the Arvit prayer and we recite the Shema. So where does this bedtime Shema come from and why do we recite it? And why does the Talmud say that someone who recites this special Shema, all of the evil powers get washed away from them? So we have to understand what really is going on over here.

04:52
Our sages tell us the shlach ha-Kadosh, the great early commentator, the great Kabbalist, says that there are four times that are designated specifically for Teshuvah. Listen to this amazing this week's parasha connecting to Yom Kippur. What are those four times that are designated for Teshuvah, for repentance? Number one Aser Hashem Yitshuvah, the ten days of repentance which culminate with Yom Kippur. When else?

05:25
Every Erev, rosh Chodesh, the day before Rosh Chodesh is a special time of true. You know what that day is called. Anybody knows what that day is called. It's called Yom Kippur Katan. The day before Rosh Chodesh, every month is called the small Yom Kippur. The small Yom Kippur, the Yom Kippur of every month. We have the Yom Kippur of every year, but we also have the Yom Kippur, the Yom Kippur of every month. We have the Yom Kippur of every year, but we also have the Yom Kippur of every month. Then we have Midei, erev, shabbos, kodesh.

06:00
Right before Shabbos is also the weekly Yom Kippur. Why? Because we're about to intake an influx of spiritual infusion. We're going to be infused with an elevated soul on Shabbos. So before that Shabbos we are going into, we have something called the Yom Kippur of the week, and then there is the Yom Kippur of the week and then there is the Yom Kippur of the day.

06:36
When is the Yom Kippur of the day? Right before one goes to sleep. But let's just clarify something. When do we talk about being like the most incredible time for Teshuvah? Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur is the day. Yom Kippur is the time. Whyur is the day. Yom Kippur is the time. Why? Because what comes after Yom Kippur? What comes after Yom Kippur? Living life, living with what we've done? Teshuvah for Meaning. What do we have before Rosh? Chodesh Special day, before Shabbos Special day, before every single night, before we go to sleep. We're about to start a new special day, but what's Yom Kippur? Yom Kippur is before the whole year. It's before the whole year. We're about to enter into an incredible period of time Life, life. And at the beginning, at the beginning, at the cusp, we're right at the beginning of a whole new year, we have the opportunity of Yom Kippur. So let's talk a little bit about the bedtime, shema, because I think that will help us understand the opening into Yom Kippur, so that we can connect with the two of these things.

07:56
You know, it says in Yom Kippur, in our prayer. It says V'chosem yad kol adam bo, and the signature of every person is written. So we come in front of the heavenly tribunal on Yom Kippur and God says okay. So what did you do? You say well, I can explain, let me. Let me let front of the heavenly tribunal on Yom Kippur. And God says okay. So what did you do? You say well, I can explain. Hi, let me, let me, let me right.

08:17
We all, we, we mumble and we fumble and we don't know what, what to say. How do we stay in the front of Hashem? Hashem gives us a hundred gallons of ability, of capability, and we only produced, uh, four, four little gallons worth of effort. So what are we doing with the other 96? What are we doing with the rest of our potential? Well, we have to explain it. V'chosam yad kolodom bo.

08:47
The signature of every person is in the book, meaning we put our hands on it. We showed what we did with our time, which is an incredible thing. You know these devices that waste so much time in our lives. How do we open them? With our chosem yad? We unlock it with our fingerprint. What Hashem tells us? Your signature, your fingerprint, is on your book of life. I gave you opportunity, I gave you potential. What did you do with it? It's your signature.

09:24
The special time our sages tell us, every single day, where we have a micro court case between us and the Almighty is when we go to sleep. When we go to sleep, every single night we are. What do we do? We say, gives us back our soul. Every single morning we wake up fresh. Ah, I can't even remember what happened last night. Last night I was worried. Today, carefree. Last night I was anxious what's going to be. Today, I wake up, it's like a whole new day. It was dark at night. I wake up in the morning it's light. There's a bright world ahead, a bright day ahead. At night, we have a microgment between us and the Almighty God says what did you do? What did you accomplish? Today, you know what we need in order to properly go through the night without challenges.

10:32
We recite the Shema. We recite the Shema. We recite the Shema Right before we go to sleep. We cover our eyes. Why do we cover our eyes when we recite the Shema? Because our world is very physical. You know, we see many physical things around us. There are many physical things. All of those physical things are distractions. Every single one of them, each one of them, can draw us away from our purpose and our goal and our responsibility. So what happens when we recite the Shema?

11:06
Our sages tell us we have two sets of eyes. We have physical eyes, the ones we are very familiar with, but then we have spiritual eyes and what we demonstrate. In the Shema, we cover our physical eyes so that now only our spiritual eyes see the spiritual opportunity. And what we're doing is we're saying, hashem, we allowed our physical eyes to dominate. Now we have to close them. Now we have to close them. We have to cover them with our right hand, the hand of kindness, so that we can allow our spiritual eyes to see all of the opportunities present before us. This is an amazing thing.

11:45
Our sages tell us that a person who says the Shema before they go to sleep is forgiven of their sins.

11:55
It's one of the things that we request in our beautiful Shema, the bedtime Shema. What do we say? It's an amazing prayer it says just before we even get to the Shema, we say Master of the universe, I hereby forgive anyone who angered or antagonized me or sinned against me, whether against my body, my property, my honor or against anything of mine, whether he did so accidentally, willfully, carelessly or purposely, whether through speech, deed, thought or notion, whether in this transmigration or another transmigration, I forgive everyone. I forgive everyone. May no man be punished because of me. May it be your will, hashem, my God and the God of my forefathers, that I may sin no more, whatever sins I have done before you, may you blot out in your abundant mercies, but not through suffering or difficult illnesses. May the expressions of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart find favor before you, hashem, my rock and my redeemer.

13:15
What an incredible way to go to sleep. You know what I'm saying. I'm saying, yeah, you know that person that yelled at me in the coffee shop. I forgive him. And you know the person who cut me in the line at the bank. I forgive him. And you know the person who cut me in the line at the bank. I forgive him. And you know the person who cut me off on the road. I forgive him. And all of the things that may have been done, whether they were intentional or accidental, it's irrelevant. Someone insulted me, someone didn't call me back, whatever it was, I forgive them.

13:50
This is the way we begin, because this is the micro Yom Kippur of every single day, and that's the way we end our night. That's the way we end, not really our night. That's the way we end our day, and the night begins the next day. So what do we start with? We start with forgiveness. We give forgiveness for everyone. Now let me ask you a question. The halacha says that a person should do an evaluation every night of their deeds of that day. How incredible and how powerful would it be if we each had the thought every single night about all of the actions or inactions, or deeds or misdeeds that we've done that day. You see, what we're reflecting in this prayer is just on ourselves. We forgive what they did. We're not trying to correct them. That's the big problem that in our world today is that we're trying to fix everybody. We're trying to make.

14:46
Oh, we don't like the way the speech that they're saying, so we call it hate speech or this. It's something called the Second Amendment. The First Amendment sorry, second Amendment is Texas. Right, I know you get caught up with this. We have the First Amendment and the First Amendment is freedom of speech. You can speak Even something I don't like, even something I don't agree with, even something I think is wrong. You can incite violence, but you can have your opinion, and you can. You know, you can even have your wrong opinion and say it all day long. Just look at CNN. Right, their wrong opinion all day long. It's an amazing thing. They have the right to do that and it shouldn't bother us that someone else. The only thing that we should look at is ourselves. I forgive for what they may have done something. I'm not here to correct them. I'm here to make sure I don't go to sleep angry. I'm here to make sure that I go to sleep, that I have forgiven, because what happens as a result?

15:50
As we learned yesterday, the way in which you want to be judged by the almighty is the way you should judge others. If you judge others favorably, god will say you know what you deserve to be judged favorably. If you're harsh against everybody else, then potentially what we're signaling to the almighty. Else, then potentially what we're signaling to the Almighty judge us harshly as well. And the way in which we act is the way we will be acted towards, will have be acted towards us. So by doing so, what do we do? By reciting the Shema, the Zohar says we're removing all sin from our day. We're removing all sin. Now, imagine if a person calculates their day and they realize. You know what? Perhaps I wasn't so patient with my wife, my children, I didn't give them the proper attention. You know, my neighbor, when they waved to me, I wasn't in a mood of waving back. I was like fine. You know, maybe a person who thinks about their day now the next day won't be the same. They'll be a different person because they thought about it. We all want to do good.

17:05
I've mentioned this story before but I think it's worthwhile mentioning, even though it really doesn't fit. But we can understand from the story. A friend of mine was an alcoholic. He was a drug addict for many, many years and one day today he's already over 30 years that he's sober and clean. I asked him how did you change? How did you flip a switch and one day, boom over, stopped? He said one day, by mistake, he looked at himself in the mirror. He passed by the mirror and he looked at himself. He said for years he didn't look, he avoided looking at himself in the mirror. One day, by mistake, he looked in the mirror. What did he see? He saw his true potential. He saw what he's really capable of and that changed him forever.

18:01
You see in the evening what we're doing when we're reciting the Shema, the bedtime Shema. We're looking in the mirror and looking at ourselves and we're saying you can fake the whole world, but between you and yourself you can't really fool yourself. You can fool the whole world. But did I live up to my expectations of myself? Yeah, I fell a little short and perhaps, if I'm forgiving someone else for the sins they have done towards me, maybe I should introspect and look at the sins that I may have done towards others. Maybe I was the offender and now think about that responsibility.

18:55
The essence of the bedtime Shema is really a micro Yom Kippur, a daily Yom Kippur. Now it's very interesting. The word that is defining sleep is Yishkav. To sleep is to lay down, and our sages tell us the Zohar says that it is comprised of two words Yesh, chaf Beis. What is Yesh? Yesh? There is Chaf Beis is the numerical value 22.

19:26
There are 22 letters in the aleph bet, and what we're trying to demonstrate when we go to sleep is that perhaps I distanced myself from those 22 letters of the aleph bet, which are the letters of the torah, which are all of the instruction of hashem's will for us in this world. Perhaps I just want to read this to you when a person goes into bed all of Liskos that he should remember that there are 22 letters in the Torah, maybe, perhaps a person didn't fulfill the 22 letters of the Aleph Bet that are written in the Torah, that the Torah is comprised of, and during that day he went after his desires and temptations instead. And what's? If one introspects and he says you know what, I kind of veered away from it, then what happens? This is the opportunity to have regret and to do teshuvah, a micro tshuva, a quick tshuva. So you know what I'm going to change. I regret what I did, I'm changing it for the future and I confess I did something wrong. V'rak achar, chuvayishan, eshnosay kishin, eshmosay hazaka oyla hashamayimah. And only then one should go to sleep when his pure soul now pure because he just did Shuvah now ascends to the heavens. Sages tell us that by doing so we're infusing our soul with protection. We shouldn't have bad thoughts, we shouldn't have bad dreams, we shouldn't have demons and things that come to try to divert our attention from what's really important in life. For this reason, the Ari, the Arizal, composed a special vidui, a special confession, as part of the Shema that we recite at bedtime. So I want to suggest the following we're about to enter into Yom Kippur.

21:53
Tomorrow night is Kol Nidre, on Thursday is Yizkor. It's a time for Teshuvah, it's a time for repentance. If we can all take on ourselves one thing for this coming year and say Hashem in one way. I'm going to change one way, one, only one way. Not everything. We don't have to do everything. One little thing would be that, as we sit down on our bed, we recite the Shema, we recite the Shema and just contemplate for five seconds. We recite the Shema, we recite the Shema and just contemplate for five seconds. If we can do more, great, but let's not make it burdensome. Five seconds to think about our day, about the things that we did right and we have to strengthen to do them more often, and the things that perhaps we did wrong, that we need to completely U-turn and go the opposite way in the future. It's a tremendous protector of each and every one of us if we are able to do this. It's a special gift for each and every one of us that realigns our whole coming day. So this week's Torah portion connects very, very much to Yom Kippur. It connects very, very much.

23:19
This is the charge, this is the mission that I would like to propose for all of us for this coming year To recite the Shema before we go to sleep, to bring in and infuse ourselves with the holiness, with the closeness, because what is Shema. Shema is declaring Hashem is my God, hashem is one. We have no other gods. Money is not our God. Fame is not our God. Popularity is not our God. Friends are not our God. Hashem, creator of heaven and earth, only he. And we make that declaration Shema Yisroel. We announce it to everyone, we're not shy about it, we announce it to all. Hashem Elokeinu Hashem is our God. All Hashem Elokeinu Hashem is our God. Hashem Echad Hashem is one, hashem is one. There's no trinity, there's no helpers. Hashem Echad Hashem is one.

24:21
And with this, hopefully, we'll merit that we'll have a magnificent new year. We come to Hashem on Yom Kippur tomorrow night. We say Hashem. You know why? You should forgive me, because I have a plan for the whole coming year. I'm gonna recite the Shema daily. I'm gonna change the way I live my life. I'm gonna have a check-in with myself every single day, every single night, before I go to sleep. I'll have a check-in to align myself with what your values are, what your expectations of me are, and hopefully we will all merit to a sweet, beautiful new year Amen.

24:59 - Intro (Announcement)
You've been listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe on a podcast produced by TORCH, the Torah Outreach Resource Center of Houston. Please help sponsor an episode so we can continue to produce more quality Jewish content for our listeners around the globe. Please visit torchweb.org to donate and partner with us on this incredible endeavor.