Parsha Review Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

00:01 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
You are listening to Rabbi Arya Wolby of Torch in Houston, texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast. Okay, everybody, welcome back. Welcome back to the Parsha Review Podcast. We're going to do a little bit of an insight. We're going to try to share a little bit of an insight on this week's Torah portion.

00:20
This week's Parsha is Parsha's Lech Lacha. Lech Lacha talks about Abraham. At that time his name is not Abraham, it's Abraham, and later Hashem adds the hey to his name. But the first verse in this week's Parsha begins as follows Va yom ra'ashem alavrom. And Hashem said to Abraham, lech Lacha, go for yourself Me, artsacha, from your land, Umim oladachon, and from your relatives, umim ebeisavicha, and from the house of your father, elah oritz asherareko, to the land that I will show you. So the first thing our commentaries talk about the trust that Abraham needed to have in Hashem To blindly follow what Hashem says. That Hashem say where he's going to. Just like I say to my children pack your bags, we're going away from here. Well, what's the first question they can ask? Well, where to? I want to know how to pack. Are we going on vacation? Do I need sandals? Or am I going to Minneapolis, where I'm going to need a coat, where are we going? Or Colorado for skiing. You know what I mean.

01:27
Ve'eschala gai gado, and I will make you into a nation that is great. Ve'avorechecha, and I will bless you, ve'agad lo shemecha, and make great your name. Ve'heyei brechecha, and you shall be a blessing. I'm going to say the following verse just because it's important for the nations of the world to hear this verse, because this is a promise that was given to us in the Torah. This is the manual for life, for living, for the world. It's the blueprint of creation. Ve'avorechecha, ve'avorechecha. I will bless those who bless you, ve'akalelcha Ve'ore and those who curse you. I will curse Ve'nevrochu vecha kol nishpachos ha'adama, and they will be blessed through you, all the families of the earth. So this is just a promise that Hashem says those who bless you will be blessed, those who curse you will be cursed. This is we talk about anti-Semitism in this world. Just know that those who bless the Jewish people will be blessed. Those who curse the Jewish people will be cursed.

02:37
Those of you who know Pastor Hagee has been an incredible friend of the Jewish people and I was once at one of his events that he had the Christians united for Israel night to honor Israel, where they have, you know, many, many Jews come and they celebrate supporting Jewish causes, giving money to Israel. It's really an incredible event. Speak to your local bona fide rabbi to know whether or not it's appropriate for you to go. I asked, I got my permission. You have to do the same.

03:10
Those of you who are listening, please don't throw stones at me, but I want to just share with you that this verse is a verse that he says in every one of his speeches. Remember that if you bless the Jewish people, you'll be blessed. If you curse the Jewish people, you'll be cursed, and he wants blessing. If you want blessing, this is the weapon. Okay, so I want to look at Rashi for a minute, at the first two verses, and I want to take it apart and understand what is embedded in this verse. Go for yourself.

03:52
Rashi says Lahana Ascha, for your benefit, for your pleasure, ulu Tov Ascha and for your good. So the first thing we need to understand is that Hashem created this world for our pleasure. Do you know that every single human being on planet earth has the same objective, and that objective is pleasure. Some people get that objective accomplished through living a decent life, getting a job, having dignity, providing for your family is all pleasurable things. There are people who are looking for counterfeit, fake pleasures, but they're looking for pleasure. It suits me right now. People who use drugs. What are they doing? Hey, you talk to anybody like are you crazy? You know that this is terrible for you? Yeah, but they don't think about that because right now it serves what I need.

04:49
Hashem created this world for pleasure and Hashem is guiding us, guiding Abraham. Go, because this is where the pleasure is at Now. Pleasure is not like what we think of it. If you look at the beginning of Ramchal in his book Way of the Upright or Path of the Just, ramchal tells us the ultimate pleasure which we were created for is achieved through our closeness with Hashem. The closer you are with God, the more pleasurable your life is. So why is Abraham being taken away from his parents' house? So if you remember when we talked about the first portion, beraishis, the second portion of Noach and now the portion of Lachlacha, we have the same theme in each three of these portions. What's the head? Is the first portion begin Beraishis. Bar-r-elochim is Hashem. Hashem created the heaven and the earth. Heaven is spirituality, earth is physicality. This is the struggle of mankind.

06:12
We're always going to be struggling between living a spiritual life versus living a physical life. Now, it's true, a person has to earn livelihood. A person needs to make money so that they can feed their family, they can pay their mortgage and they can pay for utilities. It's true, but there's a difference between living a physical life and living a materialistically indulged life, two different things. A person needs to distinguish between the two, because if a person is invested in materialism, they're letting go of their spirituality. If a person invests in their spirituality, they're letting go of their materialism. They counter each other. When one goes up, the other goes down. When one goes up, the other goes down. You cannot be fully accomplished in both. It's not going to work. It's an American invention to try and be also poor and also drive a Bentley. That doesn't work Well. It's financed Well. It's not the way it works. You can't be spiritually uplifted. You know we have now.

07:36
We just started on Szymchastora, shabbos morning, october 7th this year, 2023. When the terrible tragedy happened in Israel, we also started to say a new prayer, and that new prayer is In our prayer. We add Summertime. We say Morit hatal. Morit hatal is that God allows for the due to descend on earth. But from Sukkot, from the end of Sukkot to the beginning of Pesach, we change it to he who makes the wind blow and brings down the rain, referring to the winter. That prayer, if you those same words, if you change the vowels, if you look at the root of it. What is wind? Wind is ruach, ruach is spirituality, ruachaniut. What is geshem? Geshem is rain, but geshem, in the same word, is also materialism.

08:51
Mashiv haruach, someone who elevates in spirituality, morit hageshem lowers the physicality. When you elevate yourself spiritually, you lower yourself physically. Now there has to be a balance with that. It's very important to have a balance, because you can't be only spiritual and not physical. You'll die, you have to eat, you have to drink, you have to maintain a healthy body. You can't be all spiritual oh, I'm going to learn Torah all day and neglect my physical. You can't do that. But you can't either be busy all day in the gym, because what's going to happen then? You're not going to learn any Torah. So there has to be a balance.

09:46
We're not extremists in Judaism. There's no extremism in Judaism. Everything needs balance. So let me tell you an example of extremism. There are priests who don't get married. Why not? Because marriage is forcing one to have a physical relationship, a materialistic relationship. Well, that's countering the spirituality.

10:15
If you want to be spiritual, you can't be physical. In Judaism that's antithetical to everything. A Kohane Goddol, the high priest, wasn't only married to one woman, he was married to two women. Why, if his wife died, he can't be serving in the temple without a wife. You need it to have balance. You can't be all spiritual and not physical. But you can't let it get the best of you. You can't indulge yourself in a physical, materialistic world, because then you're going to let go of your spiritual world. We see that in the creation of the world. Then we see that in Noah, last week's Torah portion, noah is in the ark. The ark is his little spiritual world. Outside the physical world is getting destroyed. We see the contrast of the physical and the spiritual. And here with Abraham, we're seeing the same thing again. We're seeing this struggle, the family that he was with, nice people and all. But you have to leave your family Because if you want to invest in your own spirituality, you're going to have to leave that physical world. You're going to have to let go of it so that you can grow spiritually If you want to connect to God because of who your family is.

11:48
Aside from the fact that Abraham's father was an idolator, he had the convention of idolatry. His father was going away to Vegas for a show of the best idols, the best ceramic. He says little Abraham, can you watch my equipment here in the garden? Watch all my stuff? He was selling these things. So what did Abraham do? The Midrash tells us Abraham broke them all and then he took the stick and put it into one of the hands of the idols.

12:29
So his father comes back from his show and he's like what happened here? He says what do you mean? What happened here? Don't ask what was going on All the different gods that were fighting with each other. Who's in charge? He says look, this guy's the last one standing with the bat in his hand. He crushed everybody else. This is what he's talking about. These are inanimate objects. These things don't do anything. He says and this is who you serve as an idol, this is who you serve as a God. It's obvious. But Abraham was living in a world of total distance from God, total idolatry. Abraham needed to break away from that. You need to separate yourself completely from that world. If you want to grow, that's the step you need to take. So Rashi says here two words Lahana, ascha, ulta Vashcha, it's for your good.

13:30
Many times, hashem takes us away from the things that we enjoy doing and we're like why? Why did that need to happen? For your good? You may not know it, you may not see it, even till later, much later. It's like you're working in this company and you have all your friends there and suddenly you get fired and you're like very angry. I lost my job. I can't believe it. You have all these complaints, hashem. Why are you doing this to me, only to find you look five years later, ten years later. You look back. You're like that was the best thing that ever happened to me, because I opened my own business. I got a much better job, I was able to spend more time with my family. It was a godsend. But sometimes we don't see that, and this is a perfect example of each and every one of us.

14:25
Abraham is a representative of each and every one of us. When things happen that have no rhyme or reason, why? What does Abraham do? Lech, lecha, it's for your benefit. You may not understand it. You may not see why, but when you have the proper trust in Hashem, you'll see. Hopefully, hashem will give us a glimpse to be able to see the full picture.

14:52
So now Rashi continues Shum e eschal agai gadol, over there, not here. Over there, I'm going to make you into a great nation, ve kan I atazoch alabanim. Over here, where you are, you're not going to merit having children. So there's another important thing we need to understand when we talk about understanding how the Torah works. There are many, many different components of how Hashem created this world. One of them is that every single place has a power, has a force. For example, the Holy Land of Israel has tremendous, tremendous power. It's not your ordinary land. It's not your ordinary land. The land of Israel has special power that no place on earth can compare to. By the way, they say that all of the French wines come from Israel, because when they left, when the armies left after conquering Jerusalem, they went through the vineyards of Israel and cut from their vineyards and then planted them in France. The finest fruits come from Israel, but also the greatest tragedies happen in Israel, because it's a land of Hashem's will, and when we follow the will of Hashem, as we'll see. We're greatly rewarded and if God forbid, we do not, we're greatly punished. It's a land you can, you know, you can be out in Belgium and doesn't doesn't have any significant difference. All right person decides what they want to do. Okay, so the Hashem will Give them the reward and punishment as duly, as duly you know necessary. But in the land of Israel it's very different.

17:11
I remember when one of the Antiphadas broke out and Many of the American parents were concerned that their children were in Israel and they brought them back home to the United States. And my grandfather was very upset about it Because he said that was a lack of a moon, it was a lack of knowledge of Hashem. And he said even more we say in the Torah. The Torah tells us that someone who disobeys the Torah Va and violates the land and violates the land, va tokiha aritz osam, the land will spit them out. He says those are the people who don't have a moon. When something happens there's a rocket from his ballah, they run back to the, to New York, they run back to their home. He said that's people don't have a moon. The land is spitting them out. And we see that. Those who understand what's going on.

18:12
Today, the soldiers More soldiers than ever decided to start doing mitzvahs. Secular, totally secular. They started wearing tzitzit, they started putting on to fill in every day. It's unbelievable. I saw a picture, most beautiful picture, of like eight, ten soldiers sitting in their army base learning dafyomi, the daily folio of Talmud. I Heard that they were sending Talmuds to the army Because the soldiers, you know, between missions, one of sit, learn Torah. That's a holy nation.

19:01
Aschal ago, god, I'm gonna make you into a great nation. This is where the promise is at the ode show D Attiv acha by all of them. I'm going to identify your nature in the world. Hashem is promising Abraham, where you're at is not a good place for you. You need to go someplace better. There's someplace that is better for your growth.

19:29
Now it's not always easy for a person to change, for a person to move, for a person to Transform who they are, but sometimes there's a wake-up call. Sometimes Hashem Says now is time for you to make a move. Well, I'm not ready yet. I don't want to go, I'm comfortable, you got to go. This is the time that Avram is being told. You need to make a change, you need to move, you need to go, because this is where your greatness is going to be.

20:06
So there's another thing that we need to understand blessing. What does Hashem tell Abraham? He says the heyei brocha and you shall be a blessing. What does mean you shall be a blessing? Listen to what Rashi says. Ad-ah-shov, how you be oddy, be right. Yes, I don't, as Adam, this, noah and Oscha. Hashem says I blessed Adam, I blessed Noah, I blessed you.

20:39
The power of blessing was in whose hands, and Hashem's hands. We may ask of a to Tivorech, as I said to her boats. Abraham, I'm giving you the power To bestow blessing on others. You will have the power to bless, and this is an amazing thing. You know the Kohen. There's a coin right here. We have a. Kohen has the power to give a blessing. But that's only partially true. What is the Torah tell us? Visamu et shmi al-benai, israel, vaani avarachem, you have the power to put Hashem's name on others, but the blessing ultimately comes from Hashem Means. We can put the good wish out there.

21:35
Remember my rabbi once said that when you give someone a blessing, what are you doing? What are you doing when you're giving a blessing? It's basically, imagine You're writing to your Congressman, you're writing to your senator. You're writing to your local councilman in Local government. You telling him you know where we have a pothole here in front of my house and it's ruining the tires. People are getting a flat tire, so you're right. So one person writes, usually it's not going to be answered. But if ten people ask, ten people at twenty, a hundred people ask, a million people ask, they're gonna do something. They can't ignore everybody. So eventually they're gonna acquiesce and they'll do it. They'll fix it, they'll do what's needed to be done. That's, by the way, understanding why we have a minion, a quorum to pray together because we're coming. It's very difficult to say no to a whole group of people, say no to one, but there's a way for only one person to ask and Get it done. Imagine if the councilman or the mayor is top advisor Says you know, we really got to fix this. You don't need all those thousands of letters, you don't need that persuasion of the public. You get it done. Like that.

23:09
Abraham became that when, when Abraham says, hashem, bless this person, hashem says I bless this person. To the point where we'll see soon where Abraham says Hashem, you're going to destroy Saddam. Don't destroy Saddam. There might be 50 righteous people. Hashem says you know what? 50 righteous people? I won't destroy it, but there aren't 50. Maybe there are 40,. Abraham says If there's 40, I'll let 30, 20, 10, less than 10 doesn't count. And even less than 10 there wasn't. Abraham says let me just get my nephew out so he gets low debt. But what type of negotiation is that? Who's Abraham to negotiate? Who's Abraham?

24:03
Here we see in this week's total portion, hashem says the blessing will be with you. You have the power to give that blessing. So now, where is that power? Where is that power? The power lies in every single person, every single person carrying the name of Abraham, isaac and Jacob, meaning that we follow in their footsteps and we learn the Torah that they learned and we connect with Hashem the way they connected, which is why we say in our blessings every day in the Amida, three times Eloke Avraham, eloke Yitzchak, eloke Yaakov, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. The same relationship you had with them, hashem, please have with us, because we're trying to follow in their footsteps, hashem. They had great power in their prayers. Please allow us to have that power as well.

25:04
The idea is that we're continuing their legacy, the blessing was given to us each and every one. We have to understand how powerful we are right now as a people, as individuals. We have unbelievable power. Hashem loves our prayers. Hashem loves our requests. Me, who am I? Nobody, I can't. God wants to hear from me. God has better things to do. How many people have asked me Do you think God cares about my son's littley game? Yes, he does, because it's your son and just like you care for your son, we are God's children and God cares about our little issues, little concerns.

25:55
When someone becomes bar mitzvah which we'll see soon, where Abraham has his son Yitzchak, which is the next week's Torah portion, we'll see that Yitzchak is born and then it says Be yom hi gamelis, yitzchak and Hashem and Abraham made a party the day that Yitzchak was weaned, say to say that he was 13 years old. What does it mean weaned? Weaned means you're independent, you're on your own, you have your own accountability, you have your own responsibility. You do what you need to do because you take responsibility for yourself. There's a certain age where children are self-sufficient. You don't need to feed them anymore. They have their own job, they have their own livelihood, they take care of their own responsibilities. Yitzchak was independent, he was on his own. He was able to take responsibility for his actions at the age of 13. And that's why we celebrate bar mitzvah at the age of 13. That's the age of taking personal responsibility for your own actions. You no longer a child.

27:08
We talk about education a lot and in education we know that every age has its own responsibilities. Every age has its own time where a child is ready for certain tasks. You don't expect a three-year-old child to do difficult math problems. You don't test them on astrophysics when they're five years old. Most five-year-olds maybe you, but most five-year-olds they have to learn basic things how to walk, how to talk. There are things that are basics and the Torah teaches us that. When a child begins to talk, the father teaches them. Torah tzivalonu, moshe. The Torah was commanded to us by Moshe. It gives them emuna. It gives them a connection with the Torah. It gives them a connection with our leaders, with Moshe.

28:13
The idea is that we need to have a proper time for everything. You don't try to teach a child how to run before they walk or before they crawl. There's a process and that process is vital Because parents who try to push their children before they're ready for something will damage and hurt their children. Thirteen is the age where someone a boy a 13, a girl a 12, because girls are more mature we know that Women are superior in their responsibility over men and at that age they're ready to undertake responsibility. Now I know that today, 13-year-old boys are not like they used to be. That's true. It's not like Isaac being 13. But still that's the age where they can begin to undertake responsibilities.

29:12
So we got to this because we're talking about where blessing comes from. Abraham is being blessed by Hashem that now you can bring blessings to others. I bring you, I give you the ability to bring that blessing to others. That's exactly what we mentioned, that that we say in our prayer, the God of Abraham. We have to know my grandfather says this a lot when we talk about prayer, when we're in the prayer.

29:42
Abraham had his own relationship with God that was very unique and different than anybody else's relationship, including his son Yitzchak. His son Yitzchak had his relationship with God and Jacob had his relationship with God. Everyone was unique and everyone was different. Abraham wasn't like Isaac's, isaac wasn't like Jacob and Jacob wasn't like Abraham's and each one of us. Our relationship with God is very different than someone else's relationship with God and therefore we can't ever compare. You can't look at somebody else and say, oh, look at them, they're doing it like this. I should do it like. You have to know yourself. I have to know our individuality. Abraham was one of a kind.

30:34
Abraham was able to identify God and bring godliness into this world. Abraham was able to bring other people closer to God. You know, we know, that Abraham had a soup kitchen. His tent was open to all four directions. People would stop by and they would eat and they would leave and they would say Thank you. He says no, no, you can't leave, you have to pay. They're like what do you mean pay? It's a soup kitchen, it's a I don't know. He says no, no, no, not not to me, because you have to pay by saying thank you to the Creator. They're like you're the Creator says no, no, I'm not the Creator. I may have cooked it, I may have baked it, but I didn't create Shem. Created like who's a shem? Oh, now let's have a conversation.

31:22
And now Abraham would talk to each person. They'd bring them to the local torch center, which was the Torah outreach resource center of Haran, right, that's where he lived and He'd bring them in and you talk to them about God. And you talk to them about God's creation and show them a tree and say this tree doesn't just appear, the tree comes from the ground. Who makes it grow? How does it happen? These are miracles, human beings. You look at every single Adam of a human being, every single cell has our blueprint on it, has our identification on it, has our modern day called DNA. It's unique. Every person's DNA is different. Again, every person's Relationship with God is different because we're all unique and different. We're all special.

32:17
World should, children of Abraham, isaac and Jacob, our responsibility is to take a page out of Abraham from this week's parasha To be unique, to be different, to chart our own path In our connection with Hashem. Last week's Torah portion, parasha's not God says the kosher animal brings seven of each, male and female, the non kosher animal, only one male, one female. So what's the obvious question? The Torah is not given till a thousand, five hundred years later. No, it doesn't know what's kosher, what's not kosher. How in the world is he supposed to know what's kosher, not kosher? The Torah wasn't given yet what do our sages tell us? The Torah was written before the creation of the world and no, I follow the Torah. He knew what the Torah said. So did Abraham, even though it was a Several hundred years prior to the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

33:31
The Torah was here, the wisdom was here and, like you mentioned, abraham authored a book which is available today. You can find it. It's called Sefa Yotsir, the book of creation. What's the idea? What's the book of creation? All the secrets of creation, all of the secrets of God's blueprint, the Torah, it's all embedded into creation. So, yeah, abraham didn't know From the Torah. He knew it from his connection with God.

34:03
It's like we said many, many times what did God give the Jewish people at Mount Sinai? We know everyone's gonna say the Torah, the Torah, torah. No, that's not what God gave the Jewish people. God gave the Jewish people the revelation of his connection with them. God revealed himself at Mount Sinai. But the Jewish people said how are we going to remember this unbelievable vision at Mount Sinai, where they hear the sounds, where they hear the sights and they see the sounds? It was so clear Hashem is right here, hashem will. Okay, they see Hashem, right here, hashem, we're going to be 3,300 years from now, we're going to be in Houston, texas. How are we going to be able to connect with that vision that happened in Mount Sinai? Hashem says I'm going to give you 613 souvenirs. I'm going to give you my memorabilia.

35:07
And, by the way, when you look at the Torah and you look at the mitzvahs, why do we put on Tefillin every day? To remember the Exodus from Egypt, to remember that I am your God and I took you out of Egypt to give you the Torah? Why do we put on tzitzit? Because I took you out of Egypt and I brought you to Mount Sinai and I gave you the Torah. We have to understand. Why do we have shabbos, zechelitias, mitzvahim to remember our Exodus from Egypt? Every single mitzvah is a reminder of why Hashem brought us out of Egypt so that we serve Him and we build our relationship with Him.

35:56
The purpose of the entire Torah is not to be followers of the mitzvahs, but to be connected with Hashem. The tools through which we connect to Hashem are the mitzvahs, are the study of Torah. So, if we want to connect on the highest level possible, just like Abraham did, just like Isaac did, just like Jacob did, it's doing what we're doing right now Studying Torah, learning the word of Hashem. I was in a synagogue recently, you know, comes time for reading the Torah and people you know sitting down they're schmoozing with their friends. Sometimes sometimes, only sometimes the rabbi stood up and he said folks, do you understand what's going on here? We're reading from the Torah. This is God talking and you're talking. You're talking the same time as God is talking. What kind of respect is that for the Almighty? Hashem is talking. We need to be quiet and there's a very important perspective to understand the Torah is God talking to us? When we learn Torah, what we're doing is we're learning God language. We're learning the language that Hashem wants us to speak, the actions that Hashem wants us to act, the behaviors that Hashem wants us to have in our lives. That's the purpose of the Torah.

37:32
My dear friends, I encourage you, I urge you take a Chumash, learn this week's parasha. Of course, you can listen to the Parasha Review podcast that we rebroadcasted from last year, which gives you a quick summary of the entire portion. But take a Chumash for yourself. Don't rely on my words, on what I said. I can make mistakes too. I don't have all the understanding of every portion, but to never stop studying and studying and studying and learning the word of Hashem from Hashem in His Torah. So, my dear friends, let's take that Chumash, let's learn the parasha, study it well. You have any questions? Look at the bottom in the commentaries. It'll answer your questions, almost guaranteed. The questions you have are being addressed. There are hundreds of thousands of commentaries on the Torah to help us understand, to help us have clarity. At whatever level we're at, there's something for us to learn from the parasha. It's your Torah, it belongs to you. Take ownership of it. Have a great Chalice, my dear friends.