We're coming up to the parasha now, soon enough, where we're going to talk about the Egel HaZahav, the golden calf. As a kid, I always wondered: How did they give in? They were on such a high level. They had just had Hashem speak to them from Har Sinai. Moshe Rabbeinu tells them, “40 days and 40 nights. Guys, don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do.” And they laughed. And Moshe Rabbeinu went up the mountain. And here you have an enormous body of 600,000 men, 3 million Jews, and a whole nation full of accountants. And nobody can count 40 days. They were off by six hours. What happened over there? We look back, and we can’t help but think: What fools. It was sitting right in front of them. What fools that they couldn’t just stand the challenge.
We look at the story of Korach, and we think: How could they go? How could they go against Moshe Rabbeinu like that? To speak so negatively and to fight against him so brazenly, until Hashem himself went and opened up the earth. We look at the story of Bil'am, when he tells Balak exactly what to do with the Midyanim as they come in, and how the Yidden (Jews) sinned with so many of the women of Midyan, to the point that there was a plague of 24,000 Yidden. And we wonder: How could they? How foolish were they? The challenge of our generation, my friends, is Shemirat Einayim. It’s what we look at, and it’s sitting in our pocket. That challenge is just right there. And the future generations may look back at us, and they may wonder: How foolish were they? How could they not see as clearly as I can now from the comfort of the future?
Rabotai (my masters), we’re in the challenge of our lives. There’s so much riding against us. There’s a world today that’s demanding freedom to look at and freedom to think and freedom to be able to have no boundary set on anything whatsoever. We are meant to be the ones to stand staunch against that. We are the emissaries of Hashem, to be the ones to try to teach the world about purity, about holiness, about God. Control. That’s our job. And the place in which we’re challenged the most is with that cell phone sitting right now, the one in your pocket or the one you’re watching me on. And it’s the one in which you’re going to have to ask yourself: Will I go down in history as people in the future wondering how foolish could I have been? Or will I show restraint? Will I show control? Will I be a proper emissary of Hashem? It’s your challenge, and the next choice you make will echo for eternity.