Parsha Review Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

00:01 - Intro (Announcement)
You are listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast.

00:10 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
Welcome back everybody to the Parsha Review Podcast. I know this podcast is coming late, but this is last week's Torah portion, parsha's Korach. In Korach we learned something really amazing that Korach was a very righteous person, he was a holy person, he was a gifted Torah scholar and yet he fell to a terrible, terrible tragedy. A terrible, terrible tragedy where he was jealous of Moshe, jealous of Aaron, questioned their leadership, and it resulted in his unfortunate death by God, by the hands of Hashem, when Moshe says Hashem, if you don't like what he's doing, you're going to have to kill him in a supernatural way. And indeed that's what happened. We know that Korach, the ground opened beneath him, he and 250 of his followers all fell. Now it's very interesting that when the verse tells us and this is in chapter 16, verse 1, when Korach took, who was Korach? Korach, the son of Yitzhar, the son of Kahas, the son of Levi and the children of Eliab and the children of Eliab and the children and Aviram, the children of Aliyah, ve'on ben Peles, B'nei Ru'uven and On ben Peles from the tribe of Ru'uven Sadists, tell us why is it important, they ask, why is it important for us to mention all the descendants that they're from the children of Levi and they're from the children of Ru'uven. So the first thing we can just point out it says Ve'y. Point out, it says he took his words.

01:45
Words are very, very powerful. Great influence in our words, the words that we use, which is why our sages implore upon us to use nice words. We see this in the Torah. The Torah doesn't say an animal which is filthy. It says an animal which isn't pure. It doesn't say an animal which is tameh, but rather asher, enen, etahorah, which is not tahor, which is not pure. Because the Torah exercises what it teaches, which is use clean words. The words we use have an influence on us.

02:20
Korach used words to influence people. What did he use them for? To influence them in a negative way, to go against the will of Hashem. So what happens Then? It says that Korach was from the tribe of Levi, and where was own Ben Pallas from? He was from the tribe of Reuven. Why is that important? Which tribe they're from? Sages tell us something very, very important Rashi points this out and that is that every person we meet has an influence on us and every influence has an impact. We know today we're in a world of influencers Influencers, whether it be on social media, on TikTok, on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, on X. There are influencers out there and they have a power of influence. Korach was the first influencer and he had an influence for the negative.

03:12
Sages tell us that the tribes that camped near Korach, around the tabernacle, those tribes were influenced negatively by Korach, and those tribes that were next to Moshe and Aaron became very righteous scholars. Why did they become righteous scholars, our sages tell us, because they were next to Moses and Aaron. When you lived next to Moshe and Aaron, you got influenced in a very positive way. When you lived next to Korach, you got influenced in a very negative way, and that's why the tribe of Yisrach and Zebulun, who were right next to where Moshe was and Aaron was, they were influenced positively. The tribe of Reuven they were influenced positively. Where Onman Palace was from, was next door neighbors to Korach. They were influenced in a negative way.

03:57
Sages tell us that we have to place a tremendous emphasis on our influences, that we allow ourselves to be influenced from. We know, by the way, how is something that's put into the refrigerator cooled off? It's cooled off because it's in an environment that everything is cold and it has this effect that everything that's in that environment gets cold. You put something in an oven, the oven becomes hot, everything that's in it becomes hot. So, too, if you're in an environment where people speak Lashon Hara, what happens? You start speaking Lashon Hara, you start speaking negatively about others. If you're in an environment where people are saying positive, nice things about other people, you learn to do that as well. I have a very good friend of mine who started working in a company that had a very good influence, a good, positive environment where people give charity, they give tzedakah, and people speak nicely and people always find favor in other people, and I realized a transformation where now his way of speaking, the way he talks, the way he interacts, is much more positive than it was previously in his previous place of work. So we see that there's a tremendous power and a tremendous influence. So we see that there's a tremendous power and a tremendous influence.

05:15
So I want to share with you a quick story. There was a man who raised a family after the Holocaust. After the Holocaust, we have to understand that what was left after? There was maybe one person who survived in every community living and there was maybe one who stayed religious. It was very few and far between those who actually survived physically and those who survived spiritually. And this man raised a very, very big family, very special family, all Torah observant, and he was once commenting to his rabbi why he thinks he merited to have a big family with all his children and grandchildren growing in the way of Torah. We see that there was a tremendous, tremendous growth of secularism after the Holocaust, where Jews said, well, I want nothing to do with this, but here this person's family not only stayed committed to Torah, but really Torah scholars that were very, very committed to their Jewish life. He says that his great-grandfather, prior to the Holocaust, left in his will a request that he wants his children and his grandchildren to always live in a religious community.

06:35
That was what he asked live in a religious community. Why? Because when you live in a religious community, you're influenced by the positive forces of that community. And that is what he did. He took from what his father and his grandfather left as his inheritance. What was that? A message Stay in a Jewish environment. Stay in a holy, pure place.

07:01
We see this also in the fifth chapter of Ethics of Our Fathers in Pirkei, avos, pirkei. What does it say? It says that a person should always be in an environment where of good people. And it says that if someone comes to the rabbi and asks the rabbi rabbi, come, live in our community, live where we live, be part of our community the rabbi shouldn't go. Why? Because if you're going to their place, you could be negatively influenced, but if you bring them to your place, then they'll be positively influenced. We have to learn to be in a good environment.

07:44
We talk about this many times in our classes, not only in the Parsha podcast, in the Jewish Inspiration podcast. We talked about this in the Thinking Talmudist podcast the importance of having a positive influence. If we allow ourselves to be in a place that has negative influences, we will be negatively affected by it. It's the place where we live, but it's also where we visit. We go to the mall. We'll be influenced by the mall's influences. We go to Vegas. What is Vegas? Vegas is called Sin City for a reason. We think we're not influenced. Of course we're influenced by it. Not only that, we're online. Everybody almost. I don't know how many billions of people carry with them every single day a cell phone. You know what a cell phone is Cell phone at your fingertips. You have either the greatest influences or the worst influences on our phones in our pockets every single day. It doesn't mean that a phone is a bad thing. A phone can be an unbelievable positive influence, but it can also be very damaging, and that's something that we need to be very, very careful about, to ensure that we're always in a good environment, that we're always having a positive influence around us, and to protect ourselves and to create protective measures for ourselves and our children. Just because we're grown adults doesn't mean that we're not influenced by things. We are just as much as our children are.

09:14
Hashem should protect us all. Hashem should protect us and save us from the influences of those who are negative, those who are taking us away from the will of Hashem. Hashem should always protect us and put us in the right place. By the way, this is something we pray for. We pray for this. We pray that our children shouldn't be influenced by other negative forces. We talk about this. We pray for this in our prayer at the end of the Amidah. There are those who say don't put me among those who speak slander. Don't put me among those who are mockers, who laugh at other people. Don't put me among those who are doing negative things. We ask for this in our prayers at the end of the Amidah. We also at the end of our morning blessings don't put us around negative influences. Hashem should protect us all. That we should always be among those who do good and those who are positive influences on us and hopefully, for us and for our children, we'll go in the right ways, the ways of Hashem. Thank you and have an amazing Shabbos.

10:16 - Intro (Announcement)
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