(Way# 33) LOVING FULFILLING YOUR OBLIGATIONS: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston who we've missed these last uh i believe it's been four or five weeks since the high holiday started uh rabbi poston so busy uh doing so much work there in jerusalem and we are just so honored that he takes the time out of his busy schedule to stay up late and share with us the beauty of torah and we've been going on with uh uh the 48 ways to wisdom uh the point 30 31 and 32 were just beautiful about love loving uh uh others loving hashem and uh [Music] yeah just some wonderful wonderful material so you can always scroll back and see those uh that we've got them listed in no height world center social media in a uh uh uh uh tab uh where they're all together so we'll try to keep them all all linked together but now we're moving on to number 33 so the air rabbi we've missed you we're so glad to be back with you and we're looking forward to re continuing this uh this uh wonderful book the 48 ways to wisdom and uh we're in part 33 today yes i'm glad to be back and i'm glad to see your your happy face your smiling face and um i'm glad that uh there are people who are still interested i'm interested and uh hashem there are others and that's what we're doing here we're supplying the goods you know and the real deal the real deal so just let everyone know right this is the book that that we're using it's based on a series of north weinberg zaza and may his memory be a blessing um he was one of my rebellion he was the rosh shiva the head of the the dean of the yeshiva torah and he left a tremendous legacy and uh one of his uh i guess you call like a starship enterprise one of his uh his great um i don't know what you call it you know one of his greatest obviously accomplishments but um you know gifts to mankind is a deeper explanation of a mishna in perky in the sixth chapter the sixth mishna that talk about the 48 we'll call them character developments or attributes or traits in if you want to gain wisdom now it's based on the 49 days that the jewish people would say transverse through the desert in order to get to the revelation of mount sinai that each day is an attribute to grow to um move towards obviously these things cannot be uh you know i don't want to belittle them because of them they cannot be accomplished in in a short 49 days um but we do the best we can and really it's a lifelong um endeavor and uh one should not think you just spend 15 minutes a day on it and that's it you want to acquire them don't we yeah sure that's what it's about actually it's that's the term used in the mishnah in order to make a kenyan on the torah you have to acquire these traits to acquire the torah or let's say acquire wisdom and that is what we are here in 120 years in the on the planet and let we say 120 years we don't literally mean 120 years we mean like moshe lived 120 years he actually did die on his birthday his 120th birthday what do you say to somebody on their 120th birthday have a good day no it's a huge die he he died full of strength and vigor and clarity that's really the blessing when we actually bless people they should live 120 we don't mean literally 120 years but literally they should live a life full of clarity and strength just like moshe did all the time yeah and all the way to the end you know so bizarre to shem everyone should be healthy and wise and live to 120 like motion did so um as i mentioned this this is the safer we're using although there are um there are videotapes or i guess audio tapes one could still i don't think they're called tapes anymore but they were originally taped and the recordings that one can listen to on uh youtube in a company i think you can find them on h buy the book go to h.com or just type in rabbi north weinberg footy waste of wisdom and you'll find a link i don't know i don't know if it's amazon alone but i do believe through the h.com website you could uh purchase it as well and maybe that's the better place i i don't know but either way whatever however you get it that's the most important thing uh before before we went on air you asked me about my holidays and i you know it's about simcha it's about joy one of the main lessons and i mentioned to you already about interpersonal relationships this is one of the secrets behind the jew taking all the four different species bring them together there are different types of jews right jews that are fully immersed in torah and mitzvahs some only in torah and no mitzvah some only mitzvah no torah and some i don't know we call them reshaying we call them not so righteous right the opposite of righteous perhaps they're rebellious for whatever reason or maybe they're only rebellious for a period of time and hopefully they get they come back and join the program uh but we we need everybody and everyone is needed and everyone is loved by hashem and we're supposed to imitate hashem and so especially the idea of joy there has to be like a you have to be a vatran a vatran is someone who overlooks the personal wrongs of others and you know is looking forward to the time when we can all sit in a one sukkah right the one sucker the one you know i've been hearing a lot and i don't want to make i want to make sure we don't get banned um there are a lot of um rumors uh let's say conspiracy theories going around about a one world government and a lot of people are quite you know let's say either right you know righteously paranoid they're correctly paranoid who knows we don't know but there is one thing we are looking forward to and that is sitting under one sukkah with everybody um with a righteous government headed by the mashiach i'm not going to call it a one world government but there is a concept that if there is a let's say a conspiracy or a falsehood that is out there and it has roots it takes roots and can stay for a long time it's usually because there's some truth in it so for those who are afraid of a world one world government that is evil you have every right to be and you should do everything you can to bring about a positive one world government i don't it's probably not one more government but i do believe that every every leader of every government when mashiach comes we'll ask him for advice we'll um that's what the tanakh says yes he's subjected to you know i mean like subjugated you know as opposed to where we are now right now the jews are subjugated to the non-jews we call that um in hebrew basically we are at the whim of the non-jews and we don't have the right to live in the land the way we want to we don't have the right to build the bait to make dash the way we want to and that will all change under and again i don't mean it in the in the slightest way of the negativity of a one-world government but in terms of mashiach being let's say evident looking forward looking towards him for advice you know when we talk about the non-jews coming to jerusalem and celebrating sukkot there's got to be order i don't think it means every single non-jew i think what it means representatives of the non-jews people who are either designated like a shliyak somehow representing uh each nation or each community uh because i think it would be overwhelmed i don't know if the it would knock the the the earth off its axis if you had eight billion people in this little piece of uh property called eretz israel but sending representatives and those representatives obviously understand that the god the creator of the universe he's a zionist right he is the god of israel he is the god of am israel the torah of israel the land of israel right so there is this uh again understanding that to be subjugated to mashiach i think even assuredly the christian world understands it in a perverted way the islam nations also understand some kind of the 13th imam or some kind of messianic figure also so there is as the rambam says a justification a god's will that both christianity and islam do exist to spread the news of a jewish messiah of whatever you want to call the 13th imam of a true prophet you know prophecy will come back and to listen and subject yourself to because that's really what islam does mean to be subjugated to the will of god anyway misrat hashem that should come very soon in our days and hopefully it will be in our mamish in our days so i would also encourage those who are watching and have not seen uh um what's called the the previous chapters on this subject of the 40 ways to wisdom to go back i'm sure you have a playlist on the no hybrid center and we also do on youbanez so those who are not subscribed and it would help us also to go to yibbonnet.com and on i'm sorry on youtube channel y-i-b-o-n-e-h and you'll uh you can subscribe and you can go to the playlist as well okay so let's get started we're on way number 33. by the way just keep in mind you know we talk about the number and the 49th ways to review and then on the 50th day we received the ultimate revelation so interestingly enough you know we just passed par shot the brace sheets right we just read parashat brayshit which is the first let's say the first few chapters in genesis and um i gave a class on it's not good for man to be alone right so low low toe it's not good interestingly enough that during the six days of creation seven days of creation but during the six days of creation god says that it is good um quite a few times he didn't mention on day two at all that it was good and i mentioned in my last class because number two infers dispute and separation so loto it sorry ketov right that it was good is not mentioned at all and the the class i gave it was last thursday night was when man was created god said it's not good for man to be alone so interestingly enough because i'm i'm plugging this into this idea of wisdom that even though we use the number 48 actually there's our 32 paths to wisdom right these are the 48 ways to make a kenyan but there's 42 sorry 32 ways let's say paths to acquire wisdom now interestingly enough the word tov is the 33rd word in the torah which is significant we're now on number 33 and we're talking about trying to do good things okay the title is to love we translate this as your obligations but really it means to do good things and that's we're going to talk about so the 33rd word is toth now interestingly enough the word itself has the gematria for those who are not familiar with gematria i hope you are by now that each letter has a value so the word tov that's a tet which is uh nine avog tov above which is six and a a a a bet tov which is two it adds up to what seventeen okay so 33 sorry so 32 words come before the word of tov is the 33rd word so 33rd word plus the gematria itself the gematria itself is 17 so 33 and 17 equals 50. 50 being that big number of the day itself right they call it um what do they call the um the the holiday the christians use a certain day a certain uh term pentecost pentecost that's it but anyway they have it all wrong but anyway pentecost are pentecost meaning shadow oath seven times seven shibuya means weeks seven weeks shivua that's what shiva is the revelation which took place on the 50th day and so 50 day represents the ultimate in knowledge and understanding so here we have just as a brief introduction that today's subject is loving to do good they translated here is loving fulfilling your obligations okay now one of the greatest things is to try to understand what this means right um most people today shouldn't say most people i'd say there's a lot of people today that are into entitlements now i'm not sure i think it could be just the younger generation maybe they always were right you know the hands out why not take it if it's free right if there's no strings attached why not but we always had i mean the older people i imagine understand the work ethic and if you work hard for something you actually do have more pleasure from that which you earned as opposed to that what you were given for free keeping that in mind right that um the human being right we all know we have a yates of hara we have an inclination we were made of a body and we're made of a spirit the spirit wants spiritual things it wants spiritual pleasure wants the world to come called heaven just for the sake of uh using a language that we all understand uh we we refer to it as the world to come which is after the resurrection of the dead and it's eternal so that's the ultimate pleasure the ultimate pleasure is right now in this world connecting with the almighty who is eternal he's eternal you're already getting a taste of the world to come by connecting to hashem and the word mitzvot i know many people only know english so the word commandments right it sounds like it's a burden we're going to be discussing this whole idea the christians have it so wrong right they claim that oh god gave you a burden and now you know he sent you a free gift of grace and you don't have to be under the burden it's so wrong what we're going to talk about today is the pleasure the spiritual pleasure of obligations of responsibility of the mitzvot themselves and i did describe before and i'll describe it again the word mitzvah which many translate as law or commandment and therefore implies a burden is not at all the case in fact it means connect to connect to who to the one who gave you the opportunity to connect that's what mitzvot are he reaches out to us because he wants a relationship with us and we in turn have obligations we call them mitzvoth it's not a burden at all now you can look at it as a burden and i think that's where i don't know what percentage of the world population is wrong about it and that's we're going to address tonight today this very moment we're going to address this very point just keep in mind the word mitzvah is spelled mem sadiq hey those last two letters are part of god's name love hates part of the youth and the hand above an a you see it's the last two letters we've described with an atmash you can look it up on wikipedia a t b a s h what it really means it's an ancient hebrew code how you can take each letter of the alphabet the hebrew alphabet and it not just through gamache not just through value but basically it's the letter itself is replaced with the opposite letter on the other extreme of the alphabet in other words in in english would be a equals z or z equals a whatever the right in the second letter which would be b would be replaced by i don't even know what the last of x y z right y so y and b would be replaced so at bash in hebrew aleph tough bet shin that's why it's called at bash so the mem and sadiq uh that's the first two letters of the word mitzvah are actually on this chart when you look at the athbash chart is the yud in the hay the mitzvah itself is the ability to connect to uk to a karish baraku the one who spoke in the world came into being the one that gave us these opportunities again opportunities to connect not at all a burden and that's we're going to talk now we all know also we've discussed this idea that man is a pleasure seeker we have a soul and we have a body so the soul wants to connect to the spiritual pleasures that's god himself that intimate relationship with god but the body is from the earth it's interested in pleasures of this world right okay you can talk about from food to sex to vacations whatever it is whatever let's say turns you on physically right that's so there's this constant struggle there is that god created us this way and therefore what we end up doing is seeking pleasures as rav weinberg would say we have to become connoisseurs in pleasures we discussed this idea before but we get tripped up we make mistakes all the time and jump after what we call counterfeit pleasures let's take food for example we know the torah says for a jew you can eat this but you cannot eat that or when you eat this you make a bracha okay there's when to eat when not to eat what to eat how to eat how much to eat and making blessings be free but there's also non-kosher food and there's also overindulgence and then there's things that are not healthy for you so we're going to call them really that's counterfeit pleasures right like you guys know what non-kosher stuff is you know like camel milk and pork right i can say these words right bacon bacon right um okay so our job is to become connoisseurs and figure out what is real what is a real pleasure because real pleasure should bring us happiness right in relationships and not the counterfeit pleasures okay now just keep this in mind also god gave us a manual an instruction manual manual a madrid the word torah is there's many levels to every word right i have a dictionary you can look up any hebrew word there's a good like good eight possibilities so the word torah could be and does mean instruction it also means light but i want to focus on the word instruction means instruction when you go to a rabbi he'll give you you'll ask him questions and he'll give you answers he's instructing you what the torah he's explaining what the torah expects of you and i think that's where the christian world gets it wrong but it's okay the torah is full of expectations responsibilities and therefore the jewish people are the priests they have more responsibilities there however many people i don't know if it's seven eight or approaching nine billion people they're the layman right now you can also become a priest right there's different way we're not going to get into that right now but there is such a thing as conversion okay but we're not going to get into that now so basically we're talking about responsibility so whatever the jews teaching the world and that's what we're here to do in this 48 ways these are attributes that we feel not just feel we're obligated to think of them as important and we want to share them with you and you can accept any one of these 48 ways in order to acquire wisdom which we say is really applicable to all mankind on whatever level you're on there's no reason not to okay so he starts off by explaining yes it's true we are we do seek pleasure in careers vacations cars and homes but in our generation many people grumble about obligations as unpleasant aggravations right i mean just think of the whole christian world i mean we shouldn't say the whole because there's plenty of people who will who have awoken and understand that the jew has not a burden at all but a i'm going to call it a privilege a privilege to serve it's all about serving and that's what we're going to talk about tonight that's that's what it's going to be all about so this is a a very shallow view imagine for a second you asked your child and this never happened in my life i'm going to have five six kids imagine asking your child um could you please take out the garbage okay can you imagine them saying thank you so much for the opportunity i mean just imagine just imagining the barn or whatever yeah um so this whole idea that it's it's a burden is is a very shallow view right it's true it may be difficult to fulfill our obligations but there's great pleasure when we do it um the roshi gives a few examples i mean if you're in line to a store right and the cashier gives you the wrong change okay now may just be a few pennies maybe a few dollars maybe more but if you do the right thing and you say to them excuse me um i think you know without her boss or his boss hearing you because you don't want to get them in trouble at the same time you like kind of say hey i maybe recount the change i think you gave me too much you know and then they come wow thank you very much and how do you feel how do you feel after you did the right thing right or you see somebody drop a wallet and you run after them and you find out that in this world is the guy's whole life savings and he not only says well it was just not not just a few dollars but you saved my life how do you feel how much would you exchange that feeling for what a few bucks that's just ask yourself you know you really were at service you were helping somebody else you have to ask yourself so here is this idea that and we talked about it this shabbos to some of our guests the word is um it means power but it also means i hear some background noise i don't know if it's me or you no i'm sorry it's being fall time i don't have my air conditioning on so i have my window open there's a dog in the neighborhood barking okay he should be well now i got i got one barking out my window too um so the word cloth means power but it also means potential so when you really think about when we have opportunities as i described for misses these are opportunities this this is unleashed potential that we should be running to do mitzvahs right and i understand there's a big dilemma how many mitzvahs are there really for banana so if you go back to the original uh in the beyond the seven the very first introductory we talked about the seven laws not being specifically seven laws but seven overreaching principles that some opinions are they're actually 33 laws or even 66 or even closer to 100 or more not the all 613 but there's so many things that are actually obligate obligatory to a non-jew such as all those laws that actually are logical you don't need god to tell you right you should be able to come to that understanding yeah so you see that lady or man it doesn't matter but the older person who wants to cross the street and nobody's stopping their cars for that person whether you're in a car and you make the effort i don't care if you know you're going to be beeped and people are going to be hating you and yeah that's good i mean there shouldn't be any road road rage but let's say because obviously your life comes first if there's going to be a road rage incident i think that maybe you can bypass that i don't know but i don't think you have to put your life in danger but anyway in in these cases you would do everything you can to try to help this older person so number 33 is again it's which means love righteousness love doing what is good right once you realize the pleasure the absolute pleasure fulfilling your obligations it's much easier to carry them out there's no question about it right it's and if you're gonna have to do them anyway you might as well take pleasure in doing them and okay we spoke about the story over there and we spoke about our animal soul versus our godly soul um here he just mentions that right bodies the physical body doesn't like obligations because they require effort their body would rather be on vacation right sitting on the beach sipping a martini with a little umbrella i don't know maybe not a martini but at least a slush some kind of uh cool drink right but what is the soul the soul the real soul we're in touch with our higher soul that strife thrives on obligations right like i said and we'll talk about it again i don't know if i said it i didn't say it tonight but i've said it in the past that every jew is interconnected every mitzvah is interconnected so the truth is as you go down the ladder every human being their souls are all interconnected to another another level so when i do one mitzvah i myself am connected to every other mitzvah and if i really think about it we've discussed this idea before that if i do one sin i'm in a negative sense i'm creating a bad judgment on all of mankind and if i do a mitzvah i do a good act i do a positive command i am bringing a positive judgment to all of mankind so basically we're all interconnected right so the soul itself wants the connection and it strike thrives on obligation it gives a sense and we're going to talk about a little bit more of importance dignity as well as eternality eternity because you are connecting with the eternal as we mentioned before in the word the word itself mitzvah so basically he sums it up by telling you figure it out figure out what's really important in life when you once you have that clarity then you're willing to ignore the body's complaints remember the body just wants to sit and do nothing right listen to the yearnings of your soul everybody really wants to do the right thing i can say that i could say that and then you'll identify with the soul's desire to fulfill obligations now doing good is really doing yourself a favor we already discussed this idea of tove being the 33rd word being the gematria of 17 ultimately it's towards gaining wisdom acquiring wisdom so why is it that we have such a strong drive to do good and he mentions that because the perception of self as being good is actually a fundamental need for every human being we really want to be good i'll say even the worst evil people have somehow justified them to themselves that what they're doing is good i'll give you an example which really makes me sick to have to use it but hitler yamakushimo he should rot right hitler should rot in his mind cup in his other books he describes what he thinks that the jew is vermin is somehow sickly and bad for the betterment of mankind and therefore in his mind which is totally sick and demented somehow this is how evil people think i should say rationalize it away yeah rationalize that they also want to you know murder was forbidden in nazi germany it was still forbidden to come they just meaning human beings that you can kill cockroach they dehumanized didn't they before they dehumanized jews and would justify that it was good for mankind it's not good for the what he called the to intermarry with them and to put the dna into our system whatever it is but uh somehow another even the most evil people claim that they're doing it for the good for you know some justification as you know they're definitely seriously ill for sure they've lost all bearings right so we're saying that's the perception of self as good is a fundamental need of every human it is this self-respect and self-esteem that energizes us for living if a person doesn't think they're good they're going to lose the will to live and this is a big problem i think especially in today's society where everything is through entitlements i shouldn't say everything but there's so much and there are people kids that are spoiled rotten and unfortunately you can see on the statistics that these people have such low self-esteem they never had to work for anything in their life they were given with a silver spoon everything they ever wanted and the the suicide rate is unfortunately quite high it's much higher than the the regular population they have lost the will to live and he brings another story it's a famous story but i mean he speaks about all he spoke about a lot so imagine yourself in manhattan and manhattan is an island on the east coast of new york for those who didn't know and there's a very smelly stinky polluted river i think it's called the hudson river and um he speaks about a story of uh i guess a sightseer you know a vacationer someone who's taking this ferry around or whatever the tourist boat around and somebody else falls overboard now that river stinks so i don't know if maybe they cleaned it up but back in the day they were floating dead fish there was garbage i mean i hope they cleaned it up by now but imagine someone falls over and you take off your camera you throw off your wallet and you jump in and save this guy's life this person's life now this was your vacation and you he just ruined this guy falling over just ruined your vacation not only you you you are dirty and wet you have to go back to your hotel room take 100 showers use every bar so go to the maid and ask her for more and it could be days before that stink has left your every poor of your body um you might even have uh swallowed some of the water who knows how sick yourself might become but if you were asked 30 years later what was your best vacation most likely you're gonna say that vacation when you saved someone's life because how meaningful it was right i mean this is i don't know if it's actually true i mean it's it you have to use your imagination that this is most likely true that we've all experienced things like this similar to this on some level and we remember the time that it was so meaningful that we did something that if you were asked years later it would bring back such pleasure pleasurable memories correct i mean i think that everyone would agree with that so what's the trick the trick is to focus on the benefits of fulfilling obligations doing what is right rather than rather than simply throwing yourself into an obligation begrudgingly right hesitantly slowly even the word it's interesting the word commates and you see how it goes one second give me one second um for some reason okay so we're getting comments from people in new york saying now only the part that flows through new jersey stinks i'm sure i'm sure they're biased these people probably from new york are telling you that what about the new jersey people what will they say well let's face it those are all definitely over industry has as i i mean i grew up uh i grew up in a steel town near uh lake ontario uh north of buffalo um and the point being uh heavy industry when i was a boy the beaches were filled with people and you could go have fun in the sun on the beach and uh when i was an adult you wouldn't dare the fish were dying being washed up on the shore and you wouldn't want to go in the water all right well we let's hope that they uh have some uh cleaning up and have done it already and we'll continue i guess through regulation certain regulations for industries and whatnot in terms of pollution so the word hamates is the word used for that leavened the leavening or the leaven stuff that you're not allowed to eat on passover and matzah is what you do eat that is the unleavened bread god bless you amen god bless you healthy wealthy and wise so what's the difference between humates and matzah just a few seconds the homemade once you take water and mix it with the flour so as long as you're working it the whole time and quickly within 18 minutes of working it and you're throwing it already in the oven at a very high temperature so then it becomes matzah but if you hesitate you don't work the matzah sorry you don't work this dough the water and flour you allow it just to sit and ferment within 18 minutes if you're not working it it's going to turn into what we call leaven this eggs okay so what do we have here so hummus is a cracker where uh unleavened bread is still bread right no no let's not use the word let's just use the hebrew the matzah is what you're allowed to eat on pesach it's unleavened right the soulmate is something that became leavened and you're not allowed to eat that on on pesach when you're asked to do even though the word matsa is not spelled exactly because it's above missing but it's almost the same word as mitzvah so when's when the mitzvah comes to your hand you want to do it you don't let it ferment your parents ask you you know can you take out the garbage so what is the answer mom next commercial i'm having too much fun watching whatever it is i don't even have commercials anymore but that was that's that was you when you have a mitzvah in your hand act like it's matzah quick do it otherwise it ferments and fermenting has a sour ring effect right it it's the opposite the opposite of mitzvah now think about even the way it's spelled men okay is the same letters as in the difference is so matzah ends with a hay hamates begins with a head now the difference if you know if you try to visualize what a hat and a hay look like they're almost the same except a little sliver there's this little connection which closes it off so the hay is open and what i'm trying to say is that it's just a matter of seconds how are you going to react are you going to react with fervor the opportunity is now in my hand i'm going to do the mitzvah the opportunity to do the right thing to do what god wants me to do which is honor my parents in that case or whatever it is in terms of any other mitzvah is obviously a i call it a command for the sake but it's an opportunity to come close to hashem am i going to run to that opportunity excited yeah or am i going to let it ferment and sound say that and by the way we use the the term of the fermentation the humates as a um we call it basically during pesach as the yeats of hara in rep because that's how we have to get rid of it we go around with a candle and we do what called we we try to remove all the humates from within us right the yetzer hara the evil inclination the physical that just stagnates and wants to sit on the beach with the martini or do we want to run around and do mithras and therefore look excitingly towards the matzah the first night of pesach okay i just wanted to bring that up because i think that's probably yeah thank you for this we're talking about here um so he brings down a few ideas um not just throwing yourself into an obligation but anticipate it in a positive light ask yourself before right what pleasure will come as a result of this and we're not talking about physical pleasure we're talking about general pleasure hopefully you're in touch with your soul and you understand this is an eternal pleasure then afterwards pause to enjoy that pleasure right make note of the feeling and you can call it up the next time meaning you can bring it into your memory and know that you're doing the right thing even though you may not feel that pleasure now you felt it later on so too when that opportunity comes up you'll know that you'll feel that pleasure later on and as a practical step make plans to do good deeds this is one of the things that yibane encourages greatly because not only ibanez means to build the bait and mikdash but the world was built upon kindness and therefore we know that this is a a main ingredient to to keeping the world going is through kindness acts of kindness so we encourage our students we encourage people who are involved with our programming to um to do acts of hessian and he suggests call a friend who might need some help it's being cheered up or offered to buy groceries for a sick person or make inquiries to help someone get a job whenever you do these things doesn't your self-respect shoot up right don't you feel a sense of you're doing the right thing so seeing ourselves as good is the fuel that drives our tank and pulls us out of bed in the morning right we're here to serve hashem the very first in the king david before me always so the opportunities to serve we're here to serve hashem this is one of the reasons there's four different reasons one of the reasons we wash our hands in the morning alternatively to get rid of uh let's just say negative spiritual influences that came us during the night i'm not going to go into that but as if we're going into debate to make dash like a coin guddle to serve hashem here the whole world it's our temple the world is here for we can serve the creator of the universe so when you think like that you're sitting in your bed and you're saying the mode how grateful i am that hashem gave me life breath for what purpose other than to work on yourself which is serving hashem and to do the mitzvoth whatever misvote there are for you to do right don't stand in the way of a human being who's striving to be good he'll stream row right over you right okay now rights versus obligations this is like when was this book was written like you know 10 years ago and he gave he gave the series 30 years ago 40 years ago this is obviously based again on the mishnahs which was going back thousands of years but in the good old days the idea of civic responsibility was a standard part of american society there was a uh i was born in 1964 so i'm aging myself but uh i think it was kennedy john f kennedy ask not i'm sure many people can finish the quote for me i think it goes like this ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country maybe i'm paraphrasing i don't know but it's close enough i think you're spot on yeah so let's say that what can i do for my community what can i do for my family what can i do you know to make this world a better place right but today we live in a society where everyone seems concerned about their own rights what's in it for me what do i get out of it right what's the jewish perspective the jewish perspective is always from the standpoint of responsibility i think that's clear i think we've gotten that point across more than any other point throughout the series that's the jew is even the name israel right yeshua going straight to god it's true yaakov the name yaakov it represents the foot but the word sar is an ambassador a ambassador obviously has more responsibilities than any other citizen israel means to serve hashem as that's what ambassador does they serve their country they serve the interest of their country so this is what israel is israel stands for responsibility so um here's an example the talmud uses like when the judges are going to determine let's say damages so this person owes that person i'm a judge i'm going to say what that let's say you're against bob right you're the guilty party and you're going to now obama money no so it's like this we say like this the money that you actually have belongs to bob and therefore you have to give bob what's his that's how we're discussing not that bob has the right to collect from you but you have the responsibility to pay bob that's how we're going to end that court case that what's in your pocket right now belongs to him you have to pay him but it's not that bob has the right to take your money i know it sounds strange but the responsibility is on you okay the sages say greater i know this comes in a lot of times with the bane no movement the sages explain that someone who is um who's commanded and does is greater than one who is not commanded and does i you follow what i'm saying since the nochide has only let's say seven categories and the jew has let's say 10 or more let's say 613 as opposed to seven so when a jew does let's say listed lulav and esro right they're obligated to do that on circus and a non-jew is not so if a non-jew decides he wants to do it his reward is not even going to be in the same ballpark as the jew when he does it i'm not saying there's no reward okay i know there are people who say they shouldn't even do it i'm not even going to go no but you're trying to help us to understand the reasoning behind the matter and this i appreciate more than anything so why is it that when you're commanded and you do it's greater i would have thought like just thinking through logically which there's a fault in the logic that if i goes beyond my own character and do something that i'm not commanded to do that should be greater i should get a greater reward because i came to it on my own as opposed to being told by somebody to do it well i'll tell you the truth the truth is once you're told to do something there is a a natural in fact that's what's going on in the world today which i won't mention the big v word right this drug that they want people to get so they don't get so sick or in the hospital once the governments come down really hard and make what they call a mandate of sorts then there is a huge pushback in other words they're using the wrong method i'm just letting you know right yeah they're definitely rubbing people the wrong way for sure you know when the youtube starts censoring or other platforms start censoring other opinions so then it really makes people think twice and it so i think people can so once you're told this is you have to do this so then there's a natural hesitance hesitance hesitancy and resistance and therefore if you go ahead and do it i'm not referring to this particular thing i'm talking about in general when you go ahead and do it you will get a greater reward because we're talking about the god the decrees from hashem and he wants to give you the greatest good so when once you're commanded and that hesitant that natural hesitancy is there and you overcome that then your reward is even greater i hope i explained it i know this is that requires a whole class but this is the faulty logic that we all fall into but this is what the sages explain that once you're commanded and you do it's greater than if you just did it on your own okay why so he writes because when we're obligated our desire for independence makes us resistant so if we can overcome that to perform the good deed then we're a bigger person for it from an early age it's important to educate children to fulfill obligations to ensure they grow from experience every per every of every a parent should know this right hopefully right stop a child after he's done a good deed and ask him how do you feel i'm sure you know at a young age innocent age i'm sure they all know you know they they let's say they're fighting over a toy and then you explain to them you know that other person you're trying to take the toy away from his father's out of work i mean you can also begin to cry about it but you know that they lost a parent or they have no money or you know he's been trying he's been asking his parents for years and they just can't afford it and look look how much you have and you can afford if you can get your child to understand what it means to be a giver uh you know it would be uh it would be great it would be great that would be a great thing to teach our children uh make a list of your obligations to mankind to god to society family friends teachers self start enjoying them start enjoying and he he it's almost like he's finished here but he says your deepest obligations and this is really very important judaism says that our greatest obligation drum roll please is to become great remember we're creating the image of god and god wants us to imitate him it's one of the 613 commandments believe it or not to follow the path of god and god actually gave us the tools and we shouldn't squander them that's why wisdom is an obligation how do you gonna know what to do right wisdom is the water like i said it's hora it's horrid it's instructions instruction manual so wisdom is the water that helps us grow without it we get stuck for many people their primary struggles not over doing the right thing we already described everybody really wants to do the right thing but they're so crooked in their mind they they miss what's right what's wrong but rather the struggle's not over doing the right thing but rather not being sure what the right thing is and that's where the torah comes in so we all know everyone wants to do the right thing but how do you know what the right thing is that's what the instruction manual for that's what you need wisdom for so back to what we said earlier happiness is actually an obligation western society thinks that happiness is just optional i mentioned before in the long list 98 curses in the torah this is going to happen to you this obviously it's talking about if you sin if the jewish people sin and there's some big sins you know the three cardinal sins murder idolatry and adultery big sins and all these consequences are going to happen but it says at the end of all them because you had everything and you weren't happy all these things are going to be for you you have to understand and as a jew and i'm here to teach you right that happiness because joy and happiness synonymous you had everything and you were still complaining you were still not happy you weren't grateful the word jew means gratitude we talked about this before that's what a jew is we learned that from um leia who named her fourth child yehuda that's the root you know she even said she even says i got more than i deserved therefore i'm going to name him yehuda i am grateful that i got more than i deserve let me say moda anil in the morning i am a mode i am a yehudi i am grateful right that's what a jew and we make brachot before we eat right we make broccoli after we eat we make broccolis have to go into the bathroom we make broccoli a hundred brothers a day king david instituted a reinstitute according to some right this is a jews are busy and they're busy and they shouldn't look at it like a burden they should look at why it's an opportunity you know i'll take a great one grape just to make a bracha what a marvelous opportunity so western society thinks that happiness is optional and but really being happy is part of being considered to those around us i just want to mention rabbi yochanan in the gemara it says that he never allowed a person to walk by him without him saying good morning first okay i'm not sure it was just good morning i'm sure he smiled right you see these white things this is gold i'm not gold but it's um you know it's it's when someone else sees you smile it's contagious it's infections contagious infections and god forbid the other way around also people who are depressed people who are ungrateful people who are you can just certain character traits that come out that are very negative they also have influence you know they re reverberate there's vibrations there's things you just have to be very careful with um shaman himself which we think in terms of hillel and shimai hilla was the easy going you know cool you know live and let live kind of guy and shamai was no very strict and um and cunning and and din like very judgmental it's that's a misunderstanding there's some truth to that but it's a misunderstanding is the one who says greet everybody with a happy countenance right he wasn't this stern looking guy stoned them right like you would think of those you know christian movies but anyway the other way around meet greet everybody with a happy countenance very important so when a um when a person lives optimistically and joyfully his energy spreads a miserable person likewise spreads misery this is a famous quote from the the clea car always continuously uses this idea that someone who is bitter of spirit and i would just translate that as we're talking about in the hebrew more like miserable they want to see other people suffer and they may not be conscious of it but it comes out and there's a lot of negative negativity and we should try to build up a wall of positivity against that but sometimes you just have to separate you know just move away and not have too much to do with that person if you cannot influence that person you know we try because just like we can make people happy they can make people miserable the question who's gonna who's gonna win who's stronger so take your wheaties and your vitamin d and your zinc and put on a smile anyway and so imagine how you would feel if your parents or your friends were always unhappy wouldn't it drag you down so work on giving happiness to others it becomes toxic eventually yes yeah yeah just as you would want right you would want them to give it to you you do what you know is right and that's basically the bottom line so there are five or six suggestions he puts at the end to be a good person you need to enjoy to do good okay there are some people that are do-gooders and they're really working very hard we can learn a lot from them obligations are easier when you get in touch with the pleasure of doing the right thing okay number three doing the right thing is a soul experience right a far greater pleasure than material success and the fourth one is after a difficult task pause and reflect on how great you feel obligations help us to actualize our potential that gives you it gives you energy right and the last one is obligations are inevitable knife i added my own death and taxes so you might as well enjoy them all and i don't know about the death part but eventually if you do the right thing i guarantee you will enjoy that experience as well because it's only going to be for good okay so i think that pretty much sums it up and yeah rabbi you know this is something i definitely need to integrate into my life um i don't know if it's from years of hanging around with toxic individuals but it gets infectious it gets on you and it's so hard to wipe off i think i could always be more productive when it comes to doing certain things i run like the wind but when it comes to other things i just want to sit in that chair and uh say forget it why get out there and do that and you know you've made me really rethink my position to be more active and positive and to truly love righteousness actually want to be involved in it more and uh it's such a joy to be back with you sharing this uh uh 48 ways and uh we did miss you these last several weeks but we know how much you're you're pouring out your life out there and keeping busy and we're just thankful though every moment so uh hashem willing are we on next week is your schedule still allow it at this point everything's on green light green light so tentatively folks we got the green light for the same time next week for part 34 of this beautiful series the 48 ways to wisdom i look forward to it and we wish that you all have a beautiful beautiful week and take the rabbi's words love righteousness find opportunity out there to put it into practice and you may just be someone who's positively infectious out there and and just helps make the world a better place so we wish you all a wonderful week have a great day [Music] is