CHAZAQ Torah Talks #2: Rabbi Daniel Glatstein - Secrets of Simcha and Purim

welcome everyone to yet another amazing kazakh hour today we have a very very special guest a very dear friend of ours robbie danielle gladstein shlita world-renowned lecturer and author as well and uh fellow queen's rabbi over here in queens and now today in the five times for awkward community robbie gladstein welcome i'm so happy to see you what is to see you so you made my day for all that you do for claudius oh he's readily available to give his for hazak and many other great community organizations so rabbi you don't mind we jump straight into the questions about simcha and purim of course of course when i see you i'm already you know well i'll tell you the secret is that i was born in purim really yeah i'm going to tell you something about that that's very special okay so we look forward to purim everybody's excited about proving kids in costumes being happy is so important could you give us some physical inspiration on the topic of happiness happiness well uh happiness is uh that which everyone's seeking everybody is looking for happiness you know and the proof is more books have been written on the subject of happiness than any other subject but they say really yeah they say that the fact that so many books have been written about means that nobody's found it yet so everyone is still looking everyone's still searching everyone is looking for happiness there's an amazing comment of the vida and this comment of the hidden he points out on the words of the rama and shot because [Music] someone has a good heart is always happy the what these two things have in common the way the rama begins is they both have the word tamid shiv says [Music] of shivisi hashem le negde summit to place god before me always and the tamir of vitov mishtatamin to if you have a good heart you're always happy says one depends on the other if you place god before you always then you'll always have a good heart and be happy so the key to happiness is realizing and recognizing that everything that happens in this world is from so from the beginning of to see hashem everywhere will fulfill the end of slave mister beautiful and that's really the lesson of purim because an amazing thing you know if you look in the megillah which you know the gemara says in magilla and uh for all you out there you know mcgill it's so important to have some of the basic understandings of the massachusetts to appreciate the aunt of a purim the gemara says that the navi ishaya promises that god will make a name for himself by the way we read this every tanis the la shem la shame how did god make a name for himself through mcgillis esther and the question is the one book where god's name doesn't appear is miguel's esther that his name is nowhere to be found in the homogela the way with which god made a name for himself is with a book where his name doesn't appear but i would like to suggest that god's name appears everywhere in the miguela his name appears in magilla more than anyone where else you know why because the jewish people in the story of purim are given a new name a different name than they're called elsewhere in tanach usually let's say throughout safer shemos now we're uh we're headed toward purim and we're in the book of shamosa we talked about the meneses as binay israel that's typically what they're called in megillah miguel what are they called let's look at the word yehudam yehudim are for yehuda yehudah the qatar says the word yehudah is a wondrous name it's the name of akadesparco it's hashem's name and the dalid represents the fact that god has a throne the throne consists of three legs avraham is in the fourth leg is david dove is the fourth leg he holds up god's throne so to speak yehuda is the name of hashem throughout the rest of tanach we talk about hashem we say oh hashem our creator our guide so forth in megillah we so recognized hashem that hashem's name became part of us we became called the name of hashem where yehudhim hashem became part of us and therefore when hashem is part of you that's how you have happiness you make hashem part of your life amazing amazing and you as we all know this comes from which is think being thankful is used many times when it comes to the topic of happiness why because what's the secrets of of happiness if you change your letters around you have mahshava which is the same thing the rabbi is saying uh that we should always have shivisi it's in your mind mahashava and bisimha the same we all know this pandemic kobe 19 has been very very difficult and uh how can uh purim give us a little bit of uh of a boost and and give us uh some inspiration uh during this uh this kova 19 pandemic when so many influential people rabban and gadolin community leaders family members friends have passed away and they're not with us anymore is there anything you could give us some sort of an inspiration uh during these trying times and connected to perm somewhere somehow rabbi yeah um yeah you're asking the question of the hour this is what's on everybody's mind you know we're living through very challenging times very dark times and it's hard to see the ira it's hard to see what does rubenstein want from us so i want to share with you two ideas of two things we could take from the megillah to to breathe some hope and happiness into our lives the first thing is let's study the life of esther a little bit in my humble opinion esther lived in a way the most the saddest life anybody ever lived we know esther was the soma says ki enla of aim she had no father and she had no no mother and then the megillah continues with the mice of via vima and when her father and mother died and the gemara asked we just said she has no father and mother why repeat again and when her father and mother died and the gemara says not only did esther not have a father a mother when she was born when she was conceived her father died and when she was born her mother died so she wasn't just the islam it's not like you know her father mother took her to nursery and then her father died and then when she after her hasten her mother died she never saw her father she never saw her mother okay but you know she grows up in mordechai's house but even mordechai morocco tells her you've got to go live with ah she says no i'll let him take me against my will so at least i could stay married to you and and marcel says no you got to live with him willingly and we're done you know we're not going to be married anymore so she has no father she has no mother she has no husband i can't imagine she had much nachas from her children so she she didn't have anyone in life she had she was nobody she had no one in life she was all alone and the following story uh sort of resonated with me in in this context the story goes it's a print in the safer told us adam of rabzalman of elijahnet when the lost a child said he said until now reminisce shalom i loved you but my love for you was split for my love for my child but now that i lost my child my love is dedicated only to you we know that through the story of purim claudius reached the highest madriga they ever reached and they were macabre the tarshiba peta or allah even on harsinai we only accepted willingly the tarsus hashem had a force on us the tarshish about we didn't want to accept willingly and the matter says that the tarshival path it's not so easy it's really not so easy to accept willingly the tar shabal pan the matter says to learn tarshiva to accept the guidance of rabbanim of rabbayim of leaders you have to love hakadosh baruch with every ounce of your heart you can't have any personal desire so to speak so through the story of purim khloe so accepted the tarshival pet the oral law who could be the catalyst to to inspire khali israel to love hashem so much that we will accept the oral law i think it can only be someone who had nothing in their heart other than the love for this birth someone who had no father no mother no husband and gave everything up just to love aka and esther through her very tragic situation in a way on the one hand it was very tragic and on the other hand it was only her who could be so devoted tacos who could elevate the jewish people to such a high level so this is really a model it's a martial it's a paradigm that in life sometimes we're dealt difficulties but we have to understand hashem is grooming us in every situation we're in to elevate us for the greatest possible hatsacha so here esther lost everything and on the other hand hashem wasn't abandoning her hashem was grooming her preparing her to be the the catalyst for claudius so that's that's one amazing thought and we'll discuss that further perhaps uh so what the rub is saying that with every difficulty and challenge in life there's always some sort of a light and image hashem hopefully through this pandemic hopefully the light will be the gula who knows yeah right but but but even though it looks bleak we know we have a munna that hashem is not not just there's a glimmer of of hope hashem is preparing us in a way that this is what we need for our greatest somehow that's right 100 like we know that uh like yosev was sold to mitsrayim and uh the reason was the episode was because uh amisha had to go through uh egypt in order to go back to the to the casino so so so let's jump to to the topic of the rabbi safer your first savior is malget or akira which has to do with purim and megillah what's shot what's the reason the rabbi came out with the book the first book the rabbi came out with uh on on the topic of permanent yeah okay so um the the subject of purim is is very dear to my heart first i'll tell you no no but um first of all my my dear friend rabbi aniv was born on purim so in honor of hazak in honor of yaniv i figured that would be the most appropriate uh safer to start with but i'll tell you um firstly my grandfather who you know i had the opportunity many many years tishabhav to speak for uh kazakh and to speak about my grandfather's experiences in holocaust yeah i remember and my grandfather uh he should live and be well is one of the oldest holocaust survivors today can i know hashem he was uh a hundred years ago a while ago a hundred years old a while ago and he was in all the dark places and his name is uh zikani mari mordechai his name is mordechai why's his name he was born on tinuses there oh wow excuse me his bris was on tainis esther and he was called mordechai after murky sadiq of the megillah and the and my grandmother allah shalom who was the daughter of the last love of sakhichev also we didn't know her birthday so we celebrated my grandparents birthday on purim that was that was the day of that we recognize their birthday so to speak they were saved from haman from hitler from amalek and therefore their birthday celebration is is like a purim celebration where literally my grandfather was in the crematorium in the gas chambers and he was yanked out so we we our family we believe is based on the miracle of purim our own personal purim miracle and that's one of the major reasons that i i started with the safer on purim i want to tell you another thing i mentioned before if i could mention of course you know you know i was i was a love in queens and i'm very close to this faraday community of course to hazak yeah and for any time and uh had very strong kasharam with the community and of course uh i do want to say i'm very proud to have a haskama from brothers are very instrumental in helping me make that connection and i see rob avadya's photo right behind you it makes me very proud together with moshe feinstein by the way i'll tell you the truth everybody wants to know you know why is this picture in my background i was in zundel berman's oh really and i see a picture of avadya and rav moisha i said what i didn't know they met each other i never i never knew the two of them met and not only i have a picture i have to have this picture so i got the picture and uh this picture graces every share that's right that's right i've seen it by this year it shows something about the rav the fact that you bring in in your shirt not just you know uh but you also have many times i see the raw quotes and and and and the benny skye i'm going to share with you something else well you know you're in my office over here okay this i mentioned my grandfather is a holocaust survivor and bring the the the your your zeta administration the grandfather to the show and and uh uh you know should give him kayak that he should uh be gazent right now my father is preserving him you know um and hopefully we could get him the vaccine very soon and uh he could come he could come back um but i want to tell you know i always wondered if you see over here okay well this is a little unconventional but it's okay we're friends right i'm gonna move the camera in the left-hand side let's see if we could find it yeah the but i want to tell you a little historical story about why i think hashem was mazakami to have a connection to the khidak many years ago maybe 20 years ago i was in harmony and i was about to leave and i see the this oh hell and i didn't know what it was but i was attracted there and i went there and i i said to him there was a is the cover of the and at the time i was learning in yeshiva i didn't really know so much about who was the frida when did he live i assumed he was far the i didn't have any personal connection to the storm of the kidan but many years later when i became a rav in queens and i started giving shurim and i was like drawn to the swarm of and i sort of asked myself like what what what do i have with the fido what's you know what's my connection to the fido and i realized that my grandfather after the war after he's liberated he was made the head of the joint distribution committee the head of the religious department of the joint distribution committee and he was a polish survivor he was a fee that she did before the war and he also knew english so the american army made him the go-between between the american army and the survivors so actually he was um general eisenhower's a translator to the kluisenberger rabbi and the klosenberg rebels translator to eisenhower i'm in the office and i'll show you another picture sure please yeah this picture is uh this is my grandfather in his army uniform right after the war wow and in his capacity he um was able to ship in dalid meaning to all the survivors and this is a picture of him giving out the dahlin minimum for sukis to all the survivors and by the way the klosenberger rebel was the one who asked eisenhower to to ship in the dollar minimum for the surprise now now this is amazing one of his main responsibilities was bringing in svarim and mezuzah and building mcfarland he's my grandfather my grandfather built mcvoice in all the dp camps and he um he built yeshivas and all the dp camps and he printed safarim and the first safer one of the first two safari that my grandfather printed for the shaira sapleta for the holocaust survivors was and you see it's in the army green because it was published by the american army was laiv david of the khida so now i like the connection so i like to think that in the my grandfather after the war built up the jewish people with the swarm of so i have the smallest host to be able to learn and stay over from the top of the friday wow so wait wait the rubble's getting into the top of the safe for maguire kia which oh so either way if i i could plug right now uh whoever's interested i have to say for about hashem uh you could get it from the rabbit's website rabbidigi.com make sure to visit over there it's free delivery so uh everybody should get a copy right before a person perfect time sorry about that rabbi thank you thank you appreciate it so one of the the amazing things that hida says is that purim is the root of all the young taivan the shirish and he says purim stands for pesach this rosh hashanah yum kippur matantara all the yum and toyotim are included in purim and we know young people is yom kippurim also right right very good right so so the purim is in a way the source of all the aventarium if i may add one amazing thing sure that the gemara says that when morocco wanted to institute purim he wanted it to be a yamtha that you don't do malacha and the jewish people say no no for sure that we could do matanos of for sure we could do not a yamtif question is why not a yomtif i mean we love yamthafe we will take as many as we could get and rafner quotes mikhubalim that the reason the jewish people didn't want to uh make perma-yamthaf is because if it would have been a yamtha we would have to make havdallah after purim and a jew can never separate themselves from purim a jew has to be attached to purim the whole year so he said no yamcha because we can't be mavdog from purim we have to be connected to purim oh yeah and every monster shabbos we say rubanisham we may have to separate from shabbos but we're never going to separate from purim so we say like actually this this year uh due to the pandemic we we had perm the whole year with the mass but uh all seriousness rabbi amazing powerful so so now we understand that the connection to the rabbi is safer and why you did purring first unbelievable and uh you already mentioned i was gonna ask you about hashem's name not being written in megillah but hashem's name is over the magilla rabbit do you have anything you could leave us off with one last thought one last message a story an inspiring thought for us to continue the simchat throughout the year not just in burm and to stay strong rabbi okay i'm going to share with you one original thought on the magilla that i think and uh segwaying into what you asked before we were living in such challenging times in such difficult times to take something out of the magilla to see that hashem is with us and helping us and and preparing us for great success you know the megillah enzo of taxes all the people that's such a strange way to end the mcgill who cares that he taxes the people this is the grand finale of the story by the way hashem saved their lives and guess what you know she's taxing the people i mean who cares why is that the end of the miguel connection so let's say like this you know the the magilla be begins that i'm just having a big party it's a very luxurious party and once he's celebrating the fact that the navy said that after 70 years hashem is going to rebuild the base of mikdash and the 70 years came and they're over and the basement is not being rebuilt i'm sure it says the temple will never be rebuilt the jews are doomed forever and they're going to be in exile forever and i will be the monarch and my line of lineage will be the monarch forever the jews are done so he's celebrating the destruction of the basa amignos now by the end of the purim story we know uh esther is the queen and esther has a son from and his name is and if you read and say for ezra the jews want to go rebuild the second temple and there he ever says gaza hey go build it did you say we have no money so darya says no problem he opens up the treasury of the king the tax treasury of the king and he says take all the money to build the temple now i ask you where did thy elves get all that money from i believe he got it from the end of the megillah where akash first taxes the people and then that went into the treasury and then his son gave away all that money to rebuild the second temple so i say the purim story comes full circle the story begins and ah celebrating the temple will never be rebuilt by the end of the story akhashvirosh became the chief fundraiser to rebuild the second mesa mikdash and i would yaniv if i were you i would hire achas to fundraise for kazakh he was very good you know if only our tax money would go towards these type of uh so so the story begins is celebrating the temple will never be rebuilt but what's hashem thinking you stupid uh king at this party you're gonna kill your queen you're going to have a son he's going to rebuild the temple you think you're celebrating the destruction of jewish people this party will rebuild the temple so it's the same thing with everything in life even though we think it's very a time of khurba now and we think it's a very down and dark time there's no question hashem is not bringing us dark times beneath the dark hashem is rebuilding the jewish people this is not a time of horben it's a time of binyan and hashem should miguel as esther reveal the hidden element of what we're going through and we will see that the ubuntu is rebuilding us of course through your organization that's such a source of binion for kali israel and through all who try to uh to do their best to um bring claudius back to the torah mitzvos the should help us see the light and uh it's what inspiration rabbi we really really want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your time you know how busy the rav is doing so many great things and this farm and the shiram which are just you know i'll tell you this much whenever you speak for kazakh we have the numbers canine are the thousands tens of thousands of people that log in and are inspired and the feedback we get continue we should all have a simchat sperm a happy purim not just in perm like the rav said throughout the year permission throughout the years guys