Parsha Review Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

00:01 - Intro (Announcement)
You are listening to Rabbe Arya Wolby of Torch in Houston, texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast.

00:08 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
All right, welcome back everybody to the Jewish Inspiration Podcast, to the Parsha Review Podcast. I wanted to share something about this week's Parsha that I think is very relevant to our current events. October 7th changed our world. I'm not talking about the globe, I'm talking about the Jewish world. It changed our world forever, and one of the things that we see in this week's Parsha I think are a very important lesson, a very potent lesson for us to learn about ourselves. What is our responsibility. So we see, in the beginning of this week's Parsha, of Parsha's Chayesara, sarah dies. She was 100 years old and she was 20 years old and she was 7 years old. That's the way the verse says it. She was 100 and she was 20 and she was 7. Just say 127. No, it's coming to teach us something when we spoke about this last year, when we did our Parsha Review.

01:09
You're all welcome to listen to the rebroadcast of the Parsha Review but we see that Abraham wants to bury Sarah, his wife, and he wants to bury her specifically in Chevron. Now, chevron is where Adam is buried, that's where Eve is buried, that's where all of the patriarchs and matriarchs are going to be buried. After Abraham purchases the land and there's a negotiation. First, ephron says nah, you can have the land. Abraham says come on, how much is it going to cost? He says, no, no, it's free, it's for you, it's free. So then he says okay, you know, really, I just want to pay for it. I don't want favors, I want to pay for it. He says, okay, you know, $14 million. It's like an exorbitant amount of money, which was actually 400 of silver coins, 400 silver coins, which is an exorbitant price. And Abraham purchases the land and I want you to listen to this First, number 17, in chapter 23.

02:12
Vayakom stay Ephron. So the literal translation is that it was established the land of Ephron, ashebra, machpela, that is in Machpela, which is before Mamre, the field and the cave that is within it and all the trees that were in the field, that were within all its boundaries around it. Okay, so Abraham purchased the land. Asseges, tells the word come means Vayakom. He was elevated. Vayakom, stay Ephron. The land of Ephron was elevated. What does that mean? The land of Ephron was elevated. The land rose up, was levitating. What was happening to the land? Abraham purchased the land and it got elevated Asseges tells us something very fundamental, and that is we live in a physical world.

03:10
We live in a very physical world. You know, these keys have the laws of gravity. As soon as I drop it, it falls. Why? Because there's gravity. That's the physical world. But this does not need to be a physical item. This can be a spiritual item. We can use the same physical objects to service a spiritual cause, a spiritual purpose. We, as Jewish people, are living in a very physical world. We're living in a world where we're experiencing now. In Houston, we had last night a Kristallnacht where one of the Jewish vendors with a Jewish flag an Israeli flag on the signage, was vandalized. Last night the windows were broken through and there was severe vandalism. We're living in a world where there's hatred towards the Jews and many people are recognizing that.

04:11
There's something different that is required of me. There is something different that I need to do. There's something that I need to change in the way I'm living my life. In what way am I Jewish? We all identify as Jews. Yeah, of course I'm Jewish. I'm even, many people say, a proud Jew. But what does it mean to be a proud Jew? That means that I'm not shy about it? Does it mean that I know what I'm standing up for?

04:42
Abraham took the physical and elevated it where it wasn't the human serving the physical, but rather the physical serving the human. We have to understand that our number one objective is to be godly and to be godlike. That is our objective as Jews. We are supposed to be the example of what it means to be God's people. That means we don't shy away from our task and our responsibility. You know, I told my children yesterday one thing we can learn from the Muslims, that is, they're not embarrassed or ashamed wherever they go to be who they are. They're willing to bow down in the middle of an airport. Why, when we pray in an airport, do we find a corner? Now, granted, we've had millions of Jews murdered by anti-Semites. They haven't, so there's a reason for it. But we should be proud. We should be proud that we are tasked with this incredible responsibility of being a light to the nations.

05:59
Not a light to the nations in the sense of liberalism which, by the way, abraham was the founder of liberalism but a real one, not a fake one. Liberalism in the sense that he was there to provide for everyone who needed to help all the people traveling the way. Fierce people needed a soup kitchen. Abraham was there to serve them food, but he used it as a tool to connect people with God. He didn't use it as a way to tell you how to live your life and to knock down those who are successful. He used it as a way to bring people closer, not to distance people.

06:45
I would, I think, adventure to say that it would be accurate if I said that most of liberalism is distancing people from God, not bringing them closer. That's not where you find people who are godly People on a mission. That's great. It's great to have a mission. It's great to have a passion, but utilizing it for why God brought us here. I'd like to begin an adventure I've heard in the video we just played a few minutes ago. Maybe I'll be able to insert it here into our podcast.

07:23
All right. So I have a confession and I think it's going to be true for a lot of Jews out there and it's a big lesson for you Jew haters. So I suggest you listen, all you anti-Zionists. Growing up my Jewish identity was a completely secondary part of my life. I never even thought about it really. My parents had told me stories about what they went through. My mom had to escape Iraq because she was a Jew and my dad sadly most of his family was killed off in the Holocaust. But I never personalized it. It was never something that was super, super real to me and it was just stories of things that they went through.

07:54
But then, after October 7th, seeing the way the world responded to the attack and the amount of Jew hatred that actually exists kind of woke up. My Jewish side made me reconnect with it fully, and I think people don't realize just how many Jews out there have reconnected with their Jewish identities now. We were disappeared. We were marrying non-Jews at exceptional numbers. Most of us don't follow the religion I mean, look at me, I'm covered in tats and now so many of us are activated. You strengthen us. When you attack us. We were disappearing, so I have to say thank you to everyone who has reminded all of us Jews what it actually means to be Jewish. Thank you for showing us the true face of antisemitism and thank you for uniting us once again, because, I promise you, we're stronger than ever now.

08:43
I'd like to venture on a journey of talking about what it is that makes us proud Jews and dedicate every week or every class that we have of little segment of different pointers of what it means to be a proud Jew, talk about different mitzvahs, talk about different causes and different purposes that we can fulfill in our lifetime, and not only say it in words yes, I'm a proud Jew, but to live it and to be passionate about what it means to be a proud Jew. The first thing that I'd like to share in this journey Is that we are proud to be Jews because we don't have anything in between us and God. You know what we say every single day. Three times a day morning, evening and at bedtime. We say Shema Israel, here, oh, israel, hashem al-Okno, hashem is our God, hashem Echad, hashem is one. Do you know what we don't say? We don't say it in third person. Hashem is our God. Me, me, nobody died for our sins and we don't need any conduit through which we connect to God. We take personal responsibility. We have a direct relationship with God. We talk to God directly, not through an emissary, not through a representative. We talk directly with God. You wonder why Jews always say, I want to speak to the manager Because we like talking directly with the boss. We talk to God directly. This is the first principle of why we are proud to be Jews. We don't take some supervisor, some low ranking you know store manager. Talk to him. You're wasting your time. Talk to the owner, to the creator of heaven and earth, who brought us all into this world, charged us with a mission, and that's why we're proud. We're proud because we have our own direct relationship with God. And if we don't feel it, that's fine. It's time to start working on it.

11:16
This is the time when we can communicate with God directly, where we can talk to Hashem and cheer with him our fears, our worries, our concerns. We can talk with him directly and there's nothing which is too small and nothing which is too big for Hashem to handle. Trust me, he handles the entire world. He can handle our little issues. Oh Rabbi, it's too small for God. He's too busy dealing with the big problems of the world. He doesn't want to hear from me. Yes, he does. I Shem wants us to talk to him and when we feel that closeness, we have what to be proud about. We have what to feel proud and we can show that, by the way, to the nations of the world. We can show them that we don't need intermediaries, we don't need conduits through which we connect to God. We talk directly Baruch atah, hashem, blessed. Are you Hashem? We say over a hundred times a day blessed, are you Not blessed? Is he you? We're talking directly to God. That's something to be proud of.

12:38
Jewish pride 101. Feel your own personal connection with God. God Willing, in our next episode, will share another gem, hopefully another tool of feeling proud as a Jew. My dear friends, go out and be proud. Be proud of your own Judaism. Don't hide it. I see you're wearing an Israeli flag on your shirt. Good, don't hide it. We should not hide our identity. It's our flag, it's our banner, it's who we are. Let's not run away from it. My dear friends, hashem should protect us all. Hashem should guide us all and hopefully protect each and every one of our soldiers, those who are out in the battlefield and even those who are not in the battlefield. Hashem should protect each and every one of us and Hopefully bring us home to Jerusalem speedily in our days. Amen. I.