We are in the middle of Hodu, and we've been learning up to the part that discusses our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Yaakov, where Hashem made a deal with them to give them Eretz Canaan. It became an everlasting pact that carries on no matter what a Jew ever does, no matter how far he strays. He's always a Jew. Israel, no matter how, no matter what a person wants to do to try to shed and throw off the burden of Torah and mitzvot (commandments), he cannot. He's always going to have that connection to Hashem and that connection to everything that it brings with it: the opportunity to come back, the opportunity to do Teshuvah (repentance), and the opportunity to continue, to grow, and to get closer to Hashem. It all comes with a deal, all part of the deal of the suffering, which brings the reward, the suffering, which brings the redemption.
I saw a very interesting mashal (parable), by the way. We've heard a million times that as dark as the darkness is, that's how light the light's going to be. The darker the darkness, the greater the light is going to be at the end. So imagine you're in a really dark room. All of a sudden, somebody comes in and turns on the light. There's a certain brightness, a relief. It's such a stark change from the blackest darkness to the brightness of the light. The darker the room was, the greater that stark difference is. The darker the room was before, the more you appreciate the light, and the more you enjoy the light that came on all of a sudden like that.
So the darkness of the Galut (exile)—the darker it is, the more the light is going to be appreciated. Not just that it's going to be lighter, and not just that the darkness is going to be the cause for light. We know that. Aside from that, it's going to be more evident because of the greater darkness. This is the balance: you have the darkness on one side—the suffering, the persecution, the troubles, the difficulties—as part of the Galut. And on the other hand, you have the reward that comes with it. I don't mean the reward; I mean the rewarding aspect of your life that comes together with the troubles. That's all part of the deal, all part of the pact that Hashem made with Abraham, Isaac, and Yaakov. It is with us no matter what, no matter where we go, no matter how far we stray. We're still a Jew, and we get that part. We are... It became a law for the Jewish people. A treaty forever.
The reward I'm referring to is what we talked about in the class before: Zera Yisrael Avdo (The offspring of Israel, His servant). It's the opportunity a person has to grow from the challenges, through the challenges, because of the challenges. On the contrary, we can grow and become bigger and better because of the challenge that we've heard so much about. This is part of the pact, part of the treaty that Hashem made with Yaakov, which stands forever for every Jew, no matter how far he strays. This is an opportunity that we have. So we move on. The Pasuk (verse) we're up to is... So we need to know.
Together with the package, part of the deal of being a Jew and everything that comes along with it, is our responsibility to the world: our responsibility first of all to the Jewish nation, and by extension to the entire world. We'll learn a little bit about how that works, where we take that, and how we do it. So right here it says: “Sing to Hashem. Sing about Hashem to the whole world. Tell them over. Give them the news. Every day of His salvation.”
The Chachamim (sages) explained that we've been spread out throughout the world in the time of our Galut. Almost every country in the world, every corner of the earth, had our people, Jewish people living, growing, establishing communities—everything, Jewish life, everything you have. There's a movement out there today to find lost communities. They've literally gone all over the world, and they find these lost communities everywhere. It's unbelievable how far we've spread, how far across the world we've spread. The reason Hashem put us everywhere is for the people of that atmosphere, the people of that environment, to see what a Jew is and the life that a Jew lives; to see the growth that a Jew has, the type of elevated existence that a Jew experiences, and to understand what it means to get close to Hashem. A lot of the message gets lost for different reasons. But if you go around the world today, most people know what a Jew is because of the communities that live next to them.
Our job is to spread the message, to tell it over to the Goyim. Goyim refers to the lower level of the existence of Hashem. Goyim is a lower-level person who doesn't really believe in anything. The Goyim today believe in evolution. They believe in the Big Bang. They believe in all kinds of things: how the world came into existence by itself, all the happenings, chance, chance encounters. They don't believe in a creator. The run-of-the-mill person, uneducated and unintelligent, going down the street, doesn't believe in God. He doesn't believe in any God. Tell that guy about the Kavod of Hashem, the honor of Hashem; the existence of Hashem; how Hashem created the world something to nothing; how Hashem was the first one to exist and is going to be the last one to exist. Tell him all the ideas of the existence of Hashem. That's the lower level of belief, the elementary point that we believe. Tell it over to the Goyim. Tell all the nations.
The word Amim refers to the higher level, the more intellectual part of society: the professor who understands there was a God, but doesn't believe. He doesn't believe that Hashem runs the world. He doesn't understand the idea that Hashem continues to keep the world in existence and run the world in every last detail, like we know. He doesn't understand that. He just understands that Hashem created the world, and now the world runs by itself. So to that guy, tell over the miracles. Prove that Hashem is still running the world every moment of the day. That's how you can make a miracle.
Hashem is great and very praiseworthy. This refers to the first-level guy. Back to the first-level guy: Hashem is great. The fact that Hashem was the beginning and the end—that's the greatness of Hashem. He preceded the world; He's going to be here after the world is over. That's part of what we're telling the lower-level person. And He's awesome over every god, all the deities, all the powers, all the forces of nature that are worshipped out there. They're all awestruck by the name of Hashem because of the constant Hashgachah, the constant leading of the world that Hashem does. He didn't just create the world and let it run. All the forces understand that they have no power; they're subject to the will of Hashem. That's why they're fearful and awestruck before Hashem. All the gods are fearful of Him. And you're going to tell that to the upper-level guy, who understands that there is this god but doesn't understand that Hashem is running the world.
So we see in this section we're discussing how the Jewish people are going to spread the message, so to speak, all over to the Goyim, to the nations of the world. Now we have to know: we don't missionize. We don't go around talking to Goyim, explaining this and that, trying to convince them of everything and trying to convince them how we're right and they're wrong, or anything like that. That's not our way. That's Christianity. We don't do that.
We have to know that the way we spread the message—and it sounds very cliche—is by example. The way to influence people on any level, whether you're talking about influencing Goyim, a parent training their children, a rabbi leading his congregation, or just a person trying to influence other people in his life, is to live. Actually live. Live the ideas that you're teaching, live a certain way, and set that example.
When people watch you and see what you do, it's not just the outward things. We know being nice and polite is all very beautiful, and people see that. This is very nice. When a person is a real person, when a person's ideals and values are deep, and he has what we learned about—he speaks the truth in his heart—and he has honest introspection, where deep down he lives what he... He lives the values, the yearnings, the aspirations. That's something that permeates. People feel it. You exude these values, and when people are around you and interact with you, it comes out. It's real. It rings hollow. It doesn't have an effect.
You can talk all you want. You can train your children. You can talk till you're blue in the face, literally. You can do everything that you want them to learn, but if you don't live it, it rings hollow.
There's an interesting anecdote that I want to tell you about a hockey player who had a reputation for hitting people with his stick. He used to hit the other players with his hockey stick. That's the way he played; it was dirty play. His son was coming into the league and becoming a hockey player, so they asked the father if he thought his son was going to turn out to be like him, as far as his play. The man answered, “No. Not as I say, not as I do.” So he expected his son to listen to his preaching when the son knows, like everybody else did, that he doesn't live what he's saying. You don't have to be too smart to understand that doesn't work that way. You don't have to be too smart to understand that there's no way the son is going to be able to absorb any of the message when the father obviously doesn't live it.
But I'm here to tell you that even when it's not obvious, if deep down you don't really feel it, it also rings hollow. It's not the same. And I'll tell you something else: when you're real, if you're a real person and you have the passion and it runs really, really deep, you're honest. You don't even have to say anything. You just have to be yourself, and everybody around you will just copy you to an extent. It's subtle, and they grow from them. The people who are fake—the people around them don't go anywhere.
The way we spread the message to the world, the main way we spread the Kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God's name)—that this. That these people are asking us to do—is by living the life in a real way. One of the biggest problems today in the Jewish community at large, in my view, with all the religion going on and all the observance, is that, although we've come such a long way over the years, a lot of it is being done out of habit. We were brought up that way. A lot of the observance that we have, all the mitzvot that we do, we do because everybody else does them or because we were taught that way from way back when.
The truth of the matter is that to really get all the benefit out of our observance, out of the mitzvot that we do, the idea is for it to sink in deep. When you do it out of habit, it just doesn't do anything. It's all surface. We need to let it sink into our brains. We need to let it sink into our blood. The only way to do that is to stop and think, to think about what we're doing before we do a mitzvah.
I don't know if anybody prayed Arvit (evening prayer) tonight yet or counted the Omer (barley sheaf) yet, but if you count the Omer, that's a very good place to stop. Before we count the Omer tonight—I didn't count—stop and think for a minute. Ten seconds. Stop and think: What am I about to do? I'm about to do a mitzvah. Hashem said, the Torah says I must count every day. I'm about to fulfill a mitzvah from the Torah. I'm about to fulfill a mitzvah, count the Omer. Hashem asked you to do something, and you're going to do it. Think about what that means. What does it mean to fulfill the will of Hashem?
Some of us have bosses. I used to have a boss. When I got a directive straight from the boss—“Daniel, do this”—when I was about to do it, I felt like, “I'm doing what my boss asked me to do.” It felt good. We're doing what Hashem asked us to do. That's what it means. Don't just do it without thinking. You're wasting an opportunity to get close to Hashem. The mitzvah has the power to bring us close to Hashem, to elevate our neshamah (soul), to throw away our physical boundaries, to throw away our physical coverings that are covering over us. The mitzvah has the power to break through that—not if we just do it without thinking. If we do it without thinking, it doesn't do anything.
You need to stop and think for a second. Ten seconds. Not even ten seconds—five seconds. Nothing. It's just a flash. It can be just a brain flash, a split second. Just think about it. It's a simat lev. It's paying attention. It's just a moment of focus, of paying attention to what you're about to do.
The mitzvah we do every day: the men put on Tefillin (phylacteries). Tefillin are a tremendous opportunity every day. Think about what you're about to do. You're about to do the will of Hashem. If you want to go even higher, try to understand each mitzvah that you're doing, what the idea behind it is, what's the message of the mitzvah. Think about that. It's a whole other quest to go through each mitzvah.
Wake up in the morning; we wash our hands. Famously, the Chazon Ish tells us how much simcha he had—how happy he was every morning to wash his hands. You know what it is to wash our hands in the morning? When we wake up in the morning, there's Tumah on our hands. It's impurity. We can't do mitzvot. We can't do Torah. We can't pray. We're impure. We want to be impure. We want purity to get close to Hashem. We can't get close to Hashem when we're impure. So what do you do? You wash your hands. And what happens? You become pure. Think about that. It's unbelievable. Hashem has the power to elevate you. You become a different person. You become a spiritual person.
To live this way is how the message will permeate. It will exude the happiness that the Torah gives us if we live this way, if it runs deep with passion and with feeling. This is our job in the world. We say all the time that Hashem's name is called upon us. We say it in Korbanot (offerings) many times also. Korbanot we say all over the place. The name is called upon us. Hashem's name is pasted on us and on the nations. It's not just that we're God's nation. It's more than that. We have a responsibility to spread God's name, to bring Kiddush Hashem into the world. That's our job. Our job is to bring Kiddush Hashem into the world. We have to do it. Of course, there are many things that you can do, but the most important way to do it is to live the message, to live the ideas, to exude the ideas, to have them radiate. We should radiate those ideas.
All the gods of all the nations are Elilim. Elilim means nothing, worthless, empty. Hashem created the heavens. In the old days they had Avodah Zarah (idolatry). They had that until today somewhere, at some place in the world. The Avodah Zarah was just a piece of wood, a piece of gold, a piece of silver, or a piece of metal, and they used to worship it for whatever reason. We don't really understand it today—how they even forced it. In those days that was a big deal, to worship these idols. All the gods of all the nations are Elilim. Worthless. How can you even be? Hashem created the heavens.
These days, too, there's other types of gods. These days the people worship other types of gods. They worship the god of physical pursuits, pleasures, physical desires. Most people run after money. Some people run after other things. Some people are constantly looking to gratify themselves in different ways. Some people are looking for vacations, fancy cars, fancy houses, the beach, swimming—all different pleasures in the world. These things are goals in and of themselves. We have to know: everything, all the things that everybody's worshipping, everybody's addicted to—the drive, the whole world looks around, everybody's just running after all the physical pleasures that they want—it's all nothing. Hashem. We go after Hashem. He created the heavens. We need to take an honest look. We need to really look deep down at the big picture. We need to take stock. What's going on here?
Hashem created the world, going for 6,000 years, all different types of things. The vast, vast world, the planets, the universe. You're riding a plane almost 24 hours, at 800 miles an hour, and you still don't cross the world. It's huge. It's beyond description. You can fly in a rocket ship at 200,000 miles an hour—I don't know how fast they go—for a year, and you still don't get to Mars. The vast, vast world. This is something that defies imagination, and it's less than 6,000 years. All was done for a purpose, and the purpose of that was for each individual to see. The purpose of that was for us to grow.
The Zohar says the whole world would have been worth creating in 5-6,000 years of the world. It would have been worth creating for one Jew to be born this way in his life. The whole world would have been worth creating. Think about it: it wasn't hard to create the world. It wasn't hard to create the world. It's not difficult. There's a purpose to it. There's a reason why Hashem created this world. The reason is that the Jewish people should grow and get close to Hashem. But the Jewish people are the ones that will manage that, and as for the Goyim... Right now it's only the Jews.
We need to think. Take time out of our day every day. Think. What in this world? Why? What does Hashem want me to get out of this world? Why am I here? Ask yourself this question. Sit down and think: Why did Hashem put me in this world? Come up with your own answer. I'll give you the answer. Think about the question. The answer is He put you in this world so you should grow and get closer to Him. That's why He put you here. No other reason.
Anything that you're doing in this world that doesn't help you get closer, you're wasting your time. Because not only is the reason why you're here to begin with, not only is that the reason why you're here to begin with, but that's also the only reason why you're still here. Meaning, that's why you were put here and that's why you're still here. Not only that, but every part of you being here is a part of you. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here for that.
Meaning, if you have an hour a day, if you have an extra hour today—let's say you have a schedule where you're packed, you're working, and you have a packed schedule—one day you get an extra hour for whatever reason, you get off work early or whatever your story is, and you have an extra hour. Think about that. Why do you have an extra hour? It's for the same reason that you've been here in the first place. Time is just part of life. It's a chunk of life. That's what time is. Life is just a lot of time. So when you have time, that's the same reason why you've been here in the first place. Why am I here? Why am I here? What's my purpose in this world? Anything that I'm doing that takes me in that direction, fine. Whatever I'm not doing, whatever I'm doing that doesn't take me in that direction, I'm wasting that time. That's the way we have to look at it.
Every day, 10 minutes. Every day, 10 minutes. We need to knock it into our heads and get it through our heads: the physical pursuits, the physical pleasures—work through that. It's a waste of time, it's a waste of energy. It's not what we're here for. We need to stop running after it. It shouldn't be so important to us. We have to understand the only thing that's important in our life is getting close with Hashem. Spiritual growth. That's it. Nothing else. All the physical pursuits that everybody's running after are Elilim. Elilim means worthless, meaningless, a waste of time. Hashem. Closer to Hashem. Shamayim asah (He made the heavens). Now that is something to go after. That's something to put your mind on. That's something to spend your time on. That's something that we should be having our priorities for. Everything else doesn't matter.