Parsha Review Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast.

Good morning, everybody. Welcome back to the Parsha Review Podcast. This week's Parsha is a double portion, Parsha Spehar and Bechukose, the last two portions in the book of Leviticus. Finishing up the guidance of Hashem of how to be a holy nation, a spiritual nation, a God-like nation. And what is the command that this week's Torah portion begins with, Parsha Spehar?
The laws of the sabbatical. You know, it's an interesting thing because our sages teach us that if you learn two different things and they coincide, it's a sign that God is pleased with your study. In our Jewish inspiration podcast just yesterday, we studied about B'tachon. We're learning the Shahr B'tachon in the Chovah Salvavos, an incredible book, an incredible journey, having reliance and complete trust in Hashem. And what do you need in order to observe the sabbatical year? Complete reliance and trust in Hashem.
Because you think about it, you're working your job and now God says, Take a year off. I got to pay my bills. Who's gonna pay the electric? Who's gonna pay all that? Like what's gonna happen? What's gonna be? Hashem says, I got you covered. Okay, and that's how the command of this week's Parsha, take a year off so that I will take care of you. Take a year off. Now, it's a very interesting thing that the blessing that is promised is a promise
that only God can make. No human being can make such a promise. No human being can give, no human being can give a promise to tell future generations, rest on the 7th year and your 6th year will be a triple crop, a crop for the 6th, 7th and 8th year. It's impossible for a human being to make such a promise. Only Hashem can make such a promise. Which is fabulous. This is one of the many proofs of God's
divinity in the Torah, where God can make such a promise, a human being cannot make such a promise. Okay, then the Torah talks about the Yovel, the Jubilee. Every cycle of seven years, you have another year of Jubilee, the 50th year, again, rest for Hashem. Torah also mentions that all contracts are null and void after 50 years. So if you leased a property, the property goes back, you purchased the property, it goes back to its original owners because you know the land of Israel is divided by
tribes and every tribe gets back their land every 50 years as a reset. Okay, then you have here verse number 17, a verse that I think is so critically important for us to remember. It's not what we're going to talk about the rest of the partial review episode, but it's something which I, you know, in reviewing this, I saw this, this is something that we learned recently in one of our studies where the Torah teaches us not to cause pain to your fellow man.
If you just give a snide remark to someone, it causes them pain, you just, you just violated a prohibition in the Torah. The Torah says in chapter 25, verse number 17, Lo sonu ish esamisecha, don't cause pain verbally to your fellow man. Don't cause pain. You say a remark that's hurtful, that's painful, you just violated a biblical prohibition. God says don't do that. Ve yoreisum elokecho, and what does it say further? And you shall have fear of Hashem,
ki ani Hashem elokechem. I am Hashem, the God of all of you. Ve'assisim mizchuk osai, and you shall perform my decrees. Ve'as mishpatai, my ordinances tishmiru, you shall observe. Ve'assisim osam v'yishavtem ala oretz levetach. Observe them and perform them, then you will dwell upon the land securely. Okay, you want to, you want to be successful? Observe these laws. I have a little bit of a question here. What does Rashi say? Rashi says, you know why the Jewish people are in exile?
Because they don't observe the laws of Shemitah. The Jewish people have an exile, and it says over here, Rashi says, the 70 years that they were in exile in Babylonia, the Babylonian exile, because there were 70 sabbaticals that they didn't observe properly. So for each one of those years that they didn't, they had a year of exile. Okay, so what does it say here? Rashi brings that because of the sin of not observing the sabbatical, the Jewish people were exiled.
But do you know what it says in the next week's Torah portion? If you go in my ways, and my commandments you observe, and you will perform them, then I'll give you your rains and their time, and the land will give its produce, and the trees of the field will give their fruit, etc., etc., etc. And then the Torah says, however, if you do not listen to me, and you do not perform my commandments, and if you are loathsome of my decrees,
and my ordinances are found abhorrent by your soul, then you annul my covenant, and then you'll have terrible things. And we see all of the terrible admonitions that are brought down in the portion of Bechukose. So which one is it? Is it the Shemitah? Or is it all the other laws? Not learning Torah, for example, Rashi says there, it's not the study of Torah. So you didn't study Torah? Boom, that's the reason. One second, we just learned in Bihar,
in our Torah portion, that it's if you don't observe the laws of Shemitah. So which one is it? What's going on? So the Talmud says a very interesting story. We've learned this Talmud before, where when Moshe ascended up to the heavens, the angels were asking, God, you know, God, I think you should reconsider this Torah thing that you're giving to the Jewish people. I think maybe you should reconsider, instead of giving it to them, give it to us. Give it to us.
Moshe ascends, God says, Moshe, give them the answer. Give them the answer. You tell them. And by the way, one of the things that they asked is, What is a human born to a woman doing among us? Like, what's this? He's a human being. What is he doing? We're angels. We are so holy. What is he doing here with us? And that's what the angels asked. So what did Moshe say? Moshe said, in the Torah that God gave us,
do you know what is written? It says, honor your father and mother. He turns to the angels and he says, do you have fathers and mothers? No, you don't. He says, in the Torah, there are laws and commandments of Shemitah, sabbatical year. Do you have land? Do you own land? Do you live on the land? No. So it's not relevant to you. But really, what was Moshe saying? Moshe was saying, you can't receive the Torah if you're perfect.
God gives the Torah to those who are imperfect. God gives the Torah to the people who have challenges. Yes, it's teaching us how to be holy. But the angels don't have a state of not holiness. Human beings do. We have ups and we have downs. We have times that we can succeed and be so holy and so righteous. And then sadly, you know what else we have? We have times that we fall. We have times that we fail.
And that's who the Torah is given for. The Torah is given to those who are imperfect. The Torah is given to those who face challenges. Not to those who are perfect. The angels, the Torah doesn't relate to you. You don't have a challenge of how to honor your parents. You don't have a challenge of dealing with someone just recently whose mom did a crime. How do you honor your mother in such a way? Oh, the Torah says,
in the commandments, honor your father and mother. How do you do that? You see, we think, oh, if my mother's an angel, that's what God wants me to do. But if my mom does not act appropriately, am I still obligated? Yes. Of course. It's not only when it's going to be easy that we honor our father and mother. It's also when it's going to be difficult. When they're not going to be righteous per se.
When they're not going to be an example for us of how we should behave. When they're embarrassing too, there's a mitzvah to honor them. When they humiliate us, there's still a mitzvah to honor them. So yes, the Torah was not given to angels. The Torah was given to those who are imperfect. That means that we have potential. We have unbelievable potential that the Torah believes in us to become holy. God tells us in the Torah,
be holy because I am holy. We are here to mirror God. We have ups and downs. And ups and downs are our strength. We can attain greatness because we have ups and downs. And we can use our downs to have ups. That's why we have them. When a person is downtrodden, it's just a stepping stone to grow. We are here in this world. King Solomon tells us, adam la'amal yulad. Man was created to toil.
In fact, King Solomon says in Proverbs, go to the little ant, you lazy one. Go to the ant and take a look at his look at its ways and gain wisdom. What are its ways? What are its ways? It's so unique about an ant that it is so incredible that we need to learn from. Says the Gaon of Vilna, an ant never stops working. You know why it's called a nimala in Hebrew? It comes
from the word amel, toil. It never stops toiling. All its life, it's busy toiling and toiling and toiling. The Gaon of Vilna says that in the lifespan of an ant, it collects 1,000 kernels for its sustenance. 1,000 kernels. Do you know how many it actually consumes in its lifetime? One. It only consumes one kernel in its entire lifetime. Yet it collects over 1,000 kernels. You know why? Because it cannot stop working.
You'll never see an ant just sitting there on a beach chair relaxing, reading the New York Times with one leg over the other. You just won't ever see that. It's an image you will never see. An ant is always busy running, walking here, walking there, walking there, walking there. It's always busy. There are other things that we learn from the ant. It doesn't steal, which is a very important thing. We can talk about it another time. But what we learn, the primary
identifier of a nemala of an ant is amelut. It's its never-ending toil. This is what we're here for. We are here to toil. We are here to never stop. And this is the challenge of Shemitah. Shemitah, what is God telling us? Stop toiling. Stop toiling. It's a time for you to just be. But our sages tell us, no, God is not telling us to stop toiling. God is telling us, stop the toil of the field
and toil in the toil of Torah. Amelut bat Torah. To be amel, to be never stopping our toil means that when you're not working your field, work in your Torah. That seventh year is a time to infuse your existence, to infuse your life, to infuse your marriage, to infuse your relationship with God so that the next six years that you're going to be out in the field, you'll have this rebirth because of the infusion of the seventh
year that you were able to toil in your study of Torah. Adum la'amul yulad. Yes, you're going to be in this... I'm following what King Solomon says. Work, work, work. But now God says to stop. Why would God tell me to stop working? He's telling you stop working this way, start working another way. Every person, the biggest question I get as a rabbi is how do you balance work and family? It's a very important question.
How do you balance work and family? And it's not only a question for rabbis. It's a question for every person. How do you ensure that you provide for your family financially but are also there physically, emotionally for your family? You need to have balance. The key in life is balance. A person must have balance. If we don't have balance, we have nothing. We have chaos. Something is out of order. What we learn here in our Torah portion,
the Torah is saying, yeah, they didn't observe the sabbatical. They didn't take a break because they just wanted to work. Because again, we get caught up in the lack of bitachon. We don't realize that putting ourselves in the hand of Hashem is the greatest success. It's the greatest relationship builder. I trust you Hashem. I know you'll get me through this. But you're not working. How are you going to pay the bills? I trust Hashem. He's going to
handle it. He's going to take care of every single one of my needs. Shemitah is a don't do of the physical. But yes do. Yes toil of the spiritual. Life is meant for us to be productive. We need to always be busy being productive. Which I think is one of the big challenges of all social media. I have a friend of mine who was one of the key people on the team in Facebook
to make it addictive. This was his job. To make it addictive. Meaning they were thinking. You had people who were brilliant people thinking about how when Ed turns on his Facebook he will be inspired or intrigued to knock Ed off it. What is he like? He likes things about cars. Okay let's show him videos about cars. He likes things about politics. Let's show him things about politics. And you have these algorithms that are constantly taking the information
to things we spend time on. And they say wow this is something that's of interest to them. We're going to show them more of that. Oh they like comedy shows. We're going to show them more comedy. And that's why you have these endless flow of videos whether it be now on every platform. They have it on TikTok obviously. They have it on Instagram and they have it on Facebook and they have it on YouTube. Shorts. All of these things
by the way also torch classes are there. So if you have interest in torch classes they'll keep on sending it to you. But the idea that they don't want you to stop because then they have more of your eyeballs. They have more of your time. They have more of your and then they can advertise to you and they can do other things. But what does it do for us if we don't have that balance? If we don't put a block to ensure
that we do not fall prey to their ploy of addiction to social media. I'm disciplined but you know what at a certain point maybe delete the app. Maybe delete the app. I don't need it. What do I need it for? I don't need it. I don't have any social media on my phone. None. And the reason is because I saw that at first I needed it for posting and stuff. And I was like you know what
I'll figure out a way to do it. It may be a little bit less convenient but it'll save me the time of not being a time waster in my life. And this is so fundamental. God wants us to be productive. If we were just... I'll tell you an amazing story that I read in a book where the author writes and he says that when he was trying to build up his business he was
trying reaching out to all the people who were very successful in his industry and he realized that every single night these people would go out to a restaurant. They would go to a to a party and they would all get drunk. And he realized that he didn't drink. He realized that because he didn't drink he had a third of the day more than all of his competitors. He can do one third more because he doesn't drink. So he can be
far more successful and indeed he was. And healthier. That he didn't wake up in the morning not knowing where he was the night before. He didn't wake up the next morning not knowing who saw him in a compromising situation or not knowing what he said or how he offended another person. He had more time to be productive. If we just didn't waste time you know I love to bring examples from Elon Musk. You know what he does?
How does he manage so many fortune 100 companies? How does he manage them and stay on top of them and they're all at the top of their industry? Whether it be Tesla, best selling car last year. Right? Whether it be Starlink, whether it be all of the other SpaceX and all of the other incredible companies that he runs. Boring company. How does he do that? Norlink. How does he do that? You know what he does? He says in an interview recently
he doesn't eat dinner. He says I don't have time for it. He eats when he's hungry. He eats. Let's have a dinner together. Let's go on a date together. No he doesn't have time for that. And what does he do? He goes from one company to the next company to the next company. Spends a day or two there. They get the next plan for the next two weeks. Next company. Next sits with them. Engineers sits with the people. Oh by the way
Twitter X is also his right? Sits with them. Plans out the next couple of weeks. Boom. Next company. And he goes one after another and he's busy all day all night. He sleeps. He sleeps on a he has a house here he moved to Texas. They say that his house is worth less than any of our driveways. Okay? I'm not kidding. Like a simple little house that has like a bed and a chair. Like there's nothing else. Because he
doesn't have time for it. But you understand that someone once came to the Chavitz Chaim. A very very wealthy man. Allegedly he was one of the Rothschilds. He was traveling through Europe and he stopped to see the great Chavitz Chaim. He comes into the Chavitz Chaim's house and he is in shock. He says to the Chavitz Chaim he says the greatest rabbi of the generation by far. Everybody who knew the Chavitz Chaim is like the leader.
He looks at him. He's like his house is empty. He has nothing. See he says to him Rabbi where's your furniture? He says to him where's your furniture? He says me? I'm traveling. I'm traveling. I don't travel with my furniture. He says so am I. I'm traveling through this world. I don't have time. I'm not here permanently. I'm traveling. I don't have time to collect furniture. I'm here to work. I'm here to toil. I'm not here to collect possessions.
This needs to be our we have to remember this. God put us into this world to toil. To work hard. To accomplish. To produce. Not to consume. To produce. Produce. Produce in that means in every gift that God has given us. Whether the gift is to be a writer. To be an orator. To be a housekeeper. To be a parent. Be a producer in that arena. Be the best you can be. Don't just say you know what
I'm a victim of my circumstances. No. Excel in what you're doing. Don't be an employee to just do the job. Do it in the best possible way. Come up with new ideas. Produce new things. Innovate. This is what the Torah is teaching us here. Don't just work. It's a year to re-strategize. To re-evaluate based on the values of the Torah. You're going to have a sabbatical. You're going to have a break. Use that time to recalibrate.
It's so critically important for us to take the time and to utilize it effectively. To utilize it productively. My dear friends, I wish you all an amazing Shabbos.

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