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Today, I want to discuss a topic that I think is very important. I want to jump right into the parasha and try to pull out what we want to talk about today.
This week we read a double parasha: Acharei Mot and Kedoshim. The second parasha, Kedoshim, opens with the following pasuk (verse): “Speak to the congregation of Israel, and say to them, ‘Kedoshim tihyu, ki kadosh ani Hashem Elokeichem.’” You shall be holy, because I'm holy, Hashem your God.
This pasuk is very interesting because, first of all, we don't know exactly what it means to be holy. But what's interesting is that nowhere else do we find the Torah saying, “Be holy, because I'm holy.” Hashem is saying, “Since I'm holy, you should be holy.” It doesn't say, “Don't speak Lashon Hara (evil speech), because I don't speak Lashon Hara.” It's a funny thing. Why is the Torah telling us that we should be holy because Hashem is holy?
There's a famous midrash (rabbinic homily) that talks about this pasuk, but I want to focus on an explanation of the midrash. The midrash basically says that every single person has the ability to be like Hashem. Why? “Ki kadosh ani Hashem Elokeichem.” We have the ability to be like Hashem because we have a piece of Hashem inside of us. That's really what the pasuk is trying to say: every single person can be holy because we're made of the same material as Hashem. Hashem put His neshama (soul) inside every single person. Every person has the ability to be great, like Hashem, because we have a neshama inside us. So that's what the pasuk is referring to when it says, “Ki kadosh ani Hashem Elokeichem”—be holy because I'm holy. The pasuk is saying that every person has to realize and believe that they're special.
There's a Rabbi named Shlomo Wolbe. He writes in his book that every generation since Har Sinai (Mount Sinai) gets weaker and weaker. We call that Yeridat HaDorot (gets weaker and weaker). But he says that the challenge of our generation, the number one challenge we face, is that we have to be holy. The number one challenge we have is that people don't believe they can become great. People don't believe in themselves. We sell ourselves short. We say to ourselves, “Come on, me? What can I do? I didn't grow up so religious. I didn't learn. I don't know that much. I'm not able to do something. I tried. I failed.” Rabbi Wolbe says the biggest challenge of our generation today is that people don't believe they can become great.
In fact, they tell a story about a young man who was 12 or 13 years old. In his room, he had pictures of great rabbis. One day, he took a picture frame, wrote “Why not me?” on a piece of paper, and put it in the frame. They said that person became the great Rabbi Mordechai Gifter, who passed away in 2001. The Rosh Yeshiva of Telshe Yeshiva, he grew up as a regular American boy. But when he was young, he said to himself, “Why can't I achieve success? Why can't I be great?” He had that picture in his room his whole life, and he said, “Why not me? Why not me?”
What we see is that, generally speaking, people who become great do so because they believe they can become great. The Torah is telling us, “Every person shall be holy.” Why? Because I'm holy. And what does that mean? It means we have a piece of Hashem inside us, and we're made from the same material. So never sell yourself short and say, “Well, I can't do it. I'm not sure if I can.”
We're in the time now of Sefirat (counting). We're in the time of Shomer. We spoke about it last week. We know Rabbi Akiva had 24,000 students, and all of them passed away within a 33-day period. That's why we're growing a beard. We don't listen to music. We're mourning for the students of Rabbi Akiva.
When you analyze the story of Rabbi Akiva, his life was unbelievable. He was 40 years old, and Rabbi Akiva didn't know the Aleph-Bet (Hebrew alphabet). He worked for the richest Jew. His name was Kalba Savua. His daughter, Rachel, saw Rabbi Akiva, liked him, and decided she wanted to marry him. You can imagine Kalba Savua, her father, realizing that Rachel could marry any boy she wanted. “You're going to marry this man? He's 40 years old. He doesn't know the Aleph-Bet. He doesn't know anything. He's 40.”
Rachel fought with her father. She said, “No, I see something special in him. I want to marry him.” Kalba Savua told his daughter, “If you marry him, you're out. You're not getting a dollar from me, not getting a dollar in the will. I'm throwing you out.” She didn't care. Chazal (the Sages) tell us that originally, when Rabbi Akiva wanted to go learn the Aleph-Bet, he was embarrassed. He said, “What are they going to say? A 40-year-old man in school with five-year-olds?” His wife believed in him so much, and she decided to do something to break the ice for him. She took a donkey, made a tree grow out of its back, and brought it into the marketplace.
Back then, there was no Instagram or Facebook. Everybody saw this donkey that looked like it had a tree growing out of its back, and they were like, “What?” The first day she brought it to the marketplace, everybody crowded around to look at it. The second day, 50% of the people said, “Oh, we saw that yesterday,” and the other people looked at it. The third day, 20% of the people were looking at it. By the end of the week, nobody cared about this donkey with the tree. She told her husband, “You're right. If you go learn with five-year-olds, the first day they're going to talk about you. But after a week, nobody's going to care.”
She got him to start learning, and she made the biggest sacrifice. She told him, “Go learn for 12 years uninterrupted and become something. I see greatness in you.” He went for 12 years. When he was coming back home to his wife, he was outside his house and heard one of the neighbors telling his wife, “How do you let your husband go learn for 12 years? Are you crazy? Why would you let him leave for 12 years?”
I speak to women all the time. The husband is going away to China for a week, and they're crying. It's very hard. Twelve years? You're not going to see your husband? Who lets their husband go? He overheard his wife say, “If you wanted to stay for another 12 years, I would support you staying for another 12 years.” He didn't even go into his house. It's a big question: Why don't you just say hi to his wife? He went back to yeshiva and stayed for another 12 years. He was away from home for 24 years.
He came back home after 24 years with 24,000 students. His wife, Rachel, came out to see her husband. She hadn't seen him in 24 years. What a sacrifice she made. As she approached the crowd, all his students crowded around them. They said, “Listen, the ladies' section is over there. You can't get too close to the Rabbi.” Rabbi Akiva spotted his wife and told his students, “Stop.” He said, “Everything that I have, and everything that all of you have, belongs to her. She's the one who believed in me. She's the one who encouraged me. She's the one who put the donkey in the marketplace. She's the one who defied her father and married me. She believed in me and saw something in me, and I started to believe in myself. Everything that I have belongs to her. She deserves all the respect.”
It's possible that Rachel is the greatest heroine we have in our history. The Gemara says that after Rabbi Akiva's 24,000 students died, he was left with nobody. He was the link in the chain to the next generation. It says he went to the south and found five more students. All the Torah we have—if you go to the Kollel (advanced Torah study program) today, where there are all these books on the shelves—comes from those five students. If Rabbi Akiva hadn't become Rabbi Akiva and had those five students, we would not have Torah today. Torah would have been forgotten.
Who gets credit for Rabbi Akiva? His wife. You know why? Because she believed in him. Because she said, ... Because she said, “I see greatness in you. Yeah, you might be 40 and you don't know anything, but I know you could become somebody special.” How right was she? Hashem showed him all future generations, and he saw all the great people who were going to live after him. He asked Hashem, “I see somebody named Rabbi Akiva. How come you don't give the Torah to him?” Could you imagine? Moshe Rabbeinu was saying that Rabbi Akiva was so great that he deserved the Torah more than him, maybe.
Rachel believed in this man, Rabbi Akiva, and he became the great Rabbi Akiva, maybe one of the greatest people who ever lived. But what do you see from here? When you believe in yourself, and somebody believes in you, and you believe in yourself, you can become great. That's what the Torah is telling us. We should all be holy. You know why? Being holy is hard. We want to be physical. We don't want to be so holy. But we have to know that Hashem put a piece of Himself in us. We're divine. We have the ability to do great things.
We spoke about this a little on the High Holidays. Yosef HaTzaddik was sold by his own family for $20. He had 11 brothers. Ten of them decided to sell him as a slave. Yosef grew up in his father's house. They were royalty, and his brothers sold him for $20. You know how bad it makes you feel when your own family sells you? Now he's a slave cleaning toilets, and this woman is tempting him every day for one year.
I have to tell you something, just to put into context what it means to be down and depressed. Sidney Seder, my friend, whom we spoke about last week, lost his wife and two kids. His other kid was in the hospital. Baruch Hashem, he got out. It was a terrible tragedy. We were all so shaken up by it. Two days after this tragedy happened, his Rabbi, Rabbi Yosef, was there. He sat him down and said, “Sidney, you have three choices. Choice number one is that you can stay in bed for three months and become depressed. You could say to yourself, ‘Listen, what do I have to live for? I just lost my wife and my two kids. I have two little babies at home. They need their mother.’ Start thinking about the gravity of the tragedy, and you could just become depressed, curl up, and nobody will see you for a few months.
“Option two is that you could say, ‘How could I be religious if Hashem did this to me?’ Option three is that you could strengthen yourself, have Emunah (faith), and say, ‘I'm going to get through it with the help of my Rabbi, friends, and everybody around me.’ You could decide to change the world. Those are the three options: be depressed, lose your religion, or step up, find the strength within you, and become great. Which option do you want to choose?” Sidney said, “I choose option three. I'm going to try my best, at least.”
When I'm thinking about Yosef, you have to realize he could have chosen option one. He could have curled up in his bed and said, “My family sold me for $20. I have nothing. I have no religion. There's no Shabbat. There's no observance. There's no minyan (prayer quorum). There's nothing here. I'm in a far-out country all by myself on an island. My own family sold me to become a slave for $20.” He could have given up.
This woman, who was his master, his boss, so to speak, was tempting him every day to marry her. He held out for one year. It's impossible. He was 17 years old, very good-looking, and in the heat of the moment, in the passion years of his life. Finally, it says, he gave in. He's like, “Okay, I'm going to marry her today. That's it.” He goes in, and he's about to submit to this woman. We know the story: he sees the image of his father. All the rabbis are perplexed. What do you mean, he sees the image of his father now? Now he's thinking about his father? What happened to him?
The rabbis say that the word is Vayema'en (refused her). There are four places in the Torah that use a specific musical note. Only four times. It's called a Shalshelet. Shalshelet is like a chain. When we say it in the Torah, “Vayema'en (refused her).” It looks like a chain, like a zigzag. It says this is the defining moment in Yosef's life, because the Midrash says that once he didn't submit to this woman, Hashem blessed him. He became the leader for 80 years. From 30 years old until 110, he ruled the world. All the success he had came from that moment. So the biggest defining moment in his life was when he was about to commit the most major sin he was faced with, and he refused. The musical note is a Shalshelet.
Rabbi Shimshon Pincus says, “How did he have the might to refuse it? How did he do it?” The Rabbi says that several Pesukim earlier in the Torah, there's another time the same word is used. Yaakov refused to be consoled about his son. What happened? The brothers took Yosef's jacket, pretended he had been torn up by an animal, dipped it in goat's blood, because goat's blood is similar to human blood, and presented it to Yaakov. They said, “Your son was killed. He was destroyed.” They came to Yaakov and said, “That's it, he's done.” And Yaakov refused to be consoled.
By the way, the Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh says that, as the pasuk says, his sons and daughters came to comfort Yaakov. The Ohr HaChaim says he had 11 daughters and 11 sons, 22 children. How did they try to console him? They tried to say, “Yaakov, you have 22 kids. Okay, you lost one. It's statistics. What do you want? You have 22 other healthy kids. And they're not just any kids. Look at each kid: you have Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda. Each one is greater than the next. Look at your beautiful family. Yaakov, get over it. Yosef, anyway, was a little off track. He was having dreams that everybody was going to bow down to him. He used to be into his hair. He wasn't the right fit for us. We lost him. Get over it.”
The pasuk says Yaakov refused to give up. The Rabbi says that Vayema'en is connected to this Vayema'en, when Yosef refused. You know why he saw an image of his father? You know why he refused to sin with this woman? Because he knew his father believed in him, and he knew his father hadn't given up on him. His father poured into him for 17 years. His father learned with him. He believed in him. In that defining moment, you know why Yosef didn't commit the sin? Because he said, “My father believed in me.” He almost felt it in the air: “I can't allow myself to do this because I know my father believes in me.”
I was once listening to Rabbi Zecharia Wallerstein. He was a great man. He dealt with a lot of kids at risk. He once said that he went to rehabs throughout the country, Jewish and non-Jewish. He dealt with very difficult cases. Sometimes the guys on drugs relapsed on serious drugs several times. He said everybody said the same thing. The rehab would always tell the parents, “It doesn't matter how addicted to drugs your son is. If he knows that his parents believe in him and think he can come out of it, he'll figure out a way to stay alive.”
The deepest-seated need of any person is to know that your parents love you unconditionally, that they're there for you, and that they believe in you. Rabbi Wallerstein spoke about himself. He said that in school, when he was a kid, he was not a good kid. They threw him out of school a few times. He was ADD and couldn't sit in class. Every year on his report card, his teachers would write, “He has potential, but he doesn't live up to it.” He said it made him feel bad. “The only reason I became Rabbi Wallerstein was because my parents never doubted me. They always believed in me. I wouldn't be standing here today if not for my parents believing in me. I cared about what my teachers said, but I knew they didn't really know me. My parents really know me, and if they believe in me, then I'll be okay.”
You know why Yosef held on in the darkest hour of his life? Because he knew his father refused to give up on him. He knew his father believed in him. Then he started to believe in himself: “I'm great. I'm not going to be with this girl. I'm destined for greatness. I'm not going to allow myself to fall apart now.”
Rabbi Wallerstein told an unbelievable story. He said he opened a school, maybe 20 or 25 years ago, in Brooklyn or somewhere in the New York Tri-State area. It was for girls, young girls at risk. These girls had serious problems. They might be addicted to drugs, or maybe they were 15 years old and pregnant. It was a serious school for girls to help them. He got a building from the government, and they told him he could have the building for free as long as he didn't exceed 15 students.
He put the word out that he was opening the school and right away got 14 students to sign up. Then all of a sudden, he got three calls from three more applicants. He said, “Okay, I'll interview each one, and we'll pick.” He came into the first interview. There was a father, a mother, and a daughter sitting down. He said the girl had just come from something called “Jew stock.” You know, there's Woodstock in the mountains, where people go and party all day long, drink, take drugs, and have a good time. These Jewish teens who were at risk created this thing called Jew stock.
The girl sitting in front of him was actually high at the time of her interview. She was sitting there saying, “Hi, Rabbi,” talking very slowly and sleepily. He said, “So why do you want to come to our school?” She said, “What?” She was talking very slowly. He said, “I can't believe it. I've seen everything, but I never saw a girl come to an interview when she's high.” Every minute or two, the parents kept pushing her on her back. They were saying, “Let's say her name was Miriam. Miriam, the Rabbi is talking to you. Wake up.” “What?”
He wrote “N-O” on a little note, like, “We ain't taking this girl.” He was thinking, “Listen, we have girls at risk, but the girl has to be healthy. She has to be normal. She can't be high on drugs.” He passed it to the two people sitting with him. “We're not taking this girl.”
They finished the meeting and stood up. He told the parents, “Okay, nice to meet you. It seems like your daughter still needs some help. Tell me, how are your other kids doing?” The parents looked at him and said, “What do you mean, other kids? We don't have any other kids. She's our only hope, Rabbi. She's our only child. If she doesn't make it, we got nothing.” The Rabbi said, “She's your only child?” He took the piece of paper and wrote the word “yes.” He thought, “How can we not take her? She's the only child.” He said his heart broke.
Then Rabbi Wallerstein turned to the crowd when he told the story and said, “I made a very big mistake that day.” He asked, “What mistake do you think I made?” He went around the room, and everybody tried to guess. He said, “No. Because you know what mistake I made? When I thought she had five or six siblings, I said to myself, ‘Okay, listen, I can't help her.’ But when I found out she was the only child, I said, ‘Okay, now we have to help her.’ Every child is an only child. Every person, if Hashem created you, it's because He has a reason for you to be created, and He sees greatness in you. There's a reason for you to be here.”
He said, “Imagine telling a parent, ‘Oh, you have four other kids? They're doing good? All right, forget about your fifth kid.’ Who thinks like that? But we have to rewire our brain to recognize that every single person is the only child of Hashem. We're destined for greatness, and we have greatness within us. We can never give up on anybody, even if they're struggling, even if they're giving us a hard time. We all have kids. We also know that sometimes you have one kid who's harder than the rest. We can't hesitate to believe in that child and tell him how great he can be or how great she can be. But it's a message to ourselves. The Torah is teaching us, ‘Be holy because I'm holy. You have a piece of Me inside you,’ Hashem is saying.”
The flip side of the story of Yosef is unbelievable. Yosef's brothers came down to Mitzrayim (Egypt) for two reasons. They wanted to buy food because there was a famine, but they also wanted to find their brother Yosef. They realized Yaakov had been crying for him for 22 years, and they said to themselves, “We have to find Yosef.” When they showed up in Mitzrayim, they went to the area where the immoral acts take place because they said Yosef was a pretty boy, very handsome. They probably sold him as a slave, and he was involved in this trafficking business. They didn't find him, so they went to see the leader, who was their brother Yosef, to buy food.
They were standing in front of Yosef. The pasuk says Yosef recognized them, but the brothers didn't recognize Yosef. Rashi says, “Why didn't they recognize Yosef?” Because he grew a beard. When he was sold as a slave, he was only 17. Now he was 29 or 30 years old, and he had grown a beard. So they didn't recognize him. The problem is that the Midrash says Yosef looked exactly like his father Yaakov.
I want to ask you a question. The brothers came down on two missions: one, to buy food; two, to find their brother Yosef. They were actively looking for Yosef. They came and stood in front of a man who looked exactly like their father. There were 10 of them, and they were all geniuses. None of them picked up on it: “Hey, this is my brother Yosef”? How did they not recognize him? He looked exactly like their father Yaakov. Yeah, he grew a beard, but Yaakov had a beard too. You're looking for somebody, you're standing in front of a man who looks exactly like your father, and you're thinking, “He can't be Yosef.” What? How could they not recognize him? It's a very important question. What happened?
One girl told me yesterday, “Maybe they didn't see him.” Of course they saw him. How did they not recognize him? Listen to this answer. It's mind-blowing. In the brothers' minds, Yosef was not a good guy. He was a bad guy. They wanted to kill him. They wanted to sell him as a slave because they said he was no good. He was a bad guy. “We have to get rid of this guy.” It never occurred to them that Yosef could be this great leader. In their minds, they had a narrative that Yosef was a bad guy. So they were staring at him, looking him in the face, but they didn't realize who he was because they couldn't allow themselves to believe it.
You know what we learn from here? That's true about us ourselves. Every person has a narrative in their mind of who they are. Sometimes they could be staring at greatness within themselves, but they won't see it because the narrative in their mind doesn't allow them to see it. The same way the brothers couldn't see Yosef because they said he couldn't be this great leader, they were staring at his greatness and couldn't see it. Every person could stare at their own greatness and not see it because they have a narrative in their mind: “Oh, I can't do that. I tried it already. I'm not good at it.”
Take the elephant. You know, Barnum and Bailey have circuses throughout the country, and they travel with elephants. These elephants are the most powerful animals in the world. They weigh thousands and thousands of pounds. A lot of times, when they want to stay overnight, they tie a peg to the elephant and put it in the ground. Then they go to sleep. You try to figure out: How come the elephant doesn't just walk away from the peg? It's a little peg in the ground. The elephant weighs thousands of pounds. He could pull it out in a second. An elephant could walk through a house and break it down. It's the most powerful animal.
They realized that when the elephant is born and weighs only a couple of hundred pounds, they tie him to this peg. He tries to escape hundreds of times and can't do it. So he comes away with a narrative: “I can't pull away from this peg.” He doesn't realize that he's growing and growing and growing. He becomes 10, 15, 20 times the size he was as a kid, and he could pull out this peg in a second. But he never tries because when he was young, he tried and didn't succeed. So he doesn't bother trying again.
One Rabbi said, “That's us. We try something when we're young one time, we fail at something once, and we come in with this narrative: ‘Oh, me? I can't do this. I can't be that great. I'm not capable.’” But it's not true. It's a narrative that we tell ourselves. It's a narrative that we tell ourselves. There is tremendous greatness inside of us, and we don't necessarily look for it, understand it, or recognize it.
There was a famous actor and comedian. His name was Zero. I don't know if anybody here knows who he was. He passed away in 1963, I think. You ever think about his name? Zero. Whose name is Zero? And he was Jewish. I'll tell you about that in a second. But why was his name Zero? One time I had somebody who worked for us. My name was NG. I told my wife, “I don't know if my name is NG. I'm not sure how she could be that good.” But why would he name himself Zero?
You know what his real name was? Like she said, his name was Shmuel Yoel. He grew up in a Hasidic family in Borough Park. Somebody asked him once, when he came to Hollywood, “That name, Shmuel Yoel, won't fly in Hollywood. So you have to come up with a new name. What do you want your name to be?” He said, “I want my name to be Zero.” Why would he pick that as his name? He could have said, “My name should be awesome.” Pick anything. Pick any name in the world: amazing, awesome. “No, no. My name is Zero.”
They asked him, “Why did you pick that name?” He said, “Because when I grew up, my parents used to tell me in Yiddish, ‘You're gornisht (zero), because you can't accomplish anything. You're not following what we're supposed to do. You're a zero.’” When he came to Hollywood and they said, “What do you want your name to be?” he said, “My name is Zero. That's my name,” because he believed what his parents told him. “You're a zero.”
You know what else he realized? The Rabbi told the story and said he didn't get recognition from home, so he got it from Hollywood. But he had greatness in him, and his parents didn't want to see it. A girl asked me yesterday after class, “But Rabbi, let's say there are things that you really can't do. Let's say there are things that you're just not good at. So how can I believe I could do it if I can't do it?” I told her, “Even physical things, you have to know. We're mainly talking about spiritual things, but even physical things: there are so many stories we could point to where people did super-amazing things they never thought they could do.”
There was a grandmother in Florida who once witnessed a car run over one of her grandchildren. He was pinned under the car. It's documented. In her moment of desperation, this grandmother went and lifted up the car and saved her grandkids. I don't know any 65-year-old woman who could lift a car. I don't know many bodybuilders who could lift a car. How did she do it? She didn't think about the barrier that was in between.
I told her about the four-minute mile. For 100 years, they said you can't run a mile in less than four minutes. It was physically impossible for one century. “You can't do it.” I said, “Scientifically, a human being can't run that fast. You've got to run 15 miles an hour for a sustained period of time. It's impossible.” Until 1954, when Roger Bannister broke the record in three minutes and 59 seconds. He broke the mile in less than four minutes. You know what happened that year? Four people broke the record that same year. Since 1954, 1,722 people have broken the record.
They said for 100 years, “You can't do it,” and in the last 75 years, 1,700 people broke the record. You know why? Because you could do it. If you believe you could do it, you could do it. For the first 100 years, nobody even tried because they said it couldn't be done. Now the world record is 17 seconds less than four minutes. That's how fast the guy was able to run. Not only did Roger Bannister break it by a half a second; people broke it by 17 seconds. That's a perfect example of somebody saying it can't be done, but then, if you believe you could do it, you could do it.
This is a very, very important message, especially for women. We started to talk about how Rachel believed in her husband, and her husband became one of the greatest people in the history of the world. Yaakov Avinu believed in his child, and Yosef was able to withstand one of the greatest tests in his life because he said, “My father believes in me.” As a mother in a house, having a husband and children, we have to think about this and say, number one, we have to know we can accomplish whatever we set our minds to do. But we have to believe in our children. People are worried today about the future generation, the children. They're not going to be the same as us. There are a lot of tests, a lot of challenges. But it comes down to us in a big way to believe in our children.
I once heard a story about a woman who survived World War II. She said that when she was on her way to Auschwitz, she was separated from her whole family. It was her and her eight-year-old brother. She was 15 years old at the time. She was standing with her eight-year-old brother on the train heading to Auschwitz. She noticed that he was missing one of his shoes. You know, how does a 15-year-old talk to her eight-year-old sibling when she's nervous? She started screaming at him: “You're such an idiot. How are you going to walk without your shoe now? What's wrong with you? Where's your shoe?” She started yelling at him. He said, “I don't know. I lost it.”
She said that when they got to Auschwitz, she was separated from her brother immediately. She never saw him again. When she survived the war, she was the sole survivor in her family. Every day she used to think about how the land. The last interaction she had with her eight-year-old brother was that she called him an idiot. She said, “You're so stupid.” She spoke at one of these TED Talks and said, “I made a commitment: I'll never tell a child anything that can't be the last thing I'll ever say to them in my life. Which means, if I'm going to tell it to a child, make sure that it's something that could be the last thing I'll ever tell a child.” That's not an easy thing to live by. You might go home tonight and find a bottle of orange juice all over your kitchen, and you want to yell at them. But this woman taught us a lesson: kids are very impressionable.
This guy, Zero Mostel, named himself Zero because his parents told him he was a zero. The contrast is that Yosef withstood the most difficult test of his life as an 18-year-old man because his father believed in him. This is really Parenting 101: to understand and see the greatness that lies in each one of our children and in each one of ourselves. Don't get down and depressed. Realize that we have a piece of Hashem inside us. It's such an important message, especially in this generation.
Like Rabbi Wolbe said, the biggest test of our generation is that we think we can't accomplish great things. We think we're incapable. We think we're weak. The Yetzer Hara (evil inclination)'s number one tool is to say, “Yo, come on. You can't do it. What are you talking about?” It points to all your shortcomings, all your problems, especially for the youth today. They're looking around. They see on Instagram all these pretty girls, how they dress, how they act, how skinny they are, and they feel not enough. The young men, too, see so many successful people. There's just so much information today. It's very hard. We struggle. It's so important to show your child, “You're great. You're amazing. You can do it.”
That was just telling me this morning: this kid couldn't reach the basket. A little kid. He tried and tried and tried. They told him, “You can do it.” Suddenly, the kid did it. Now he keeps doing it every time. Simple example, but it's true.
I just want to end with a story. They say there was a group of kids about 50 years ago who decided to make prank calls. I don't know if prank calls are still a thing today. I think they know how to use different phone numbers. This group of young men decided to do the unthinkable: prank-call the greatest Rabbi of the generation, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. It was 11:30 at night. If you know anything about Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, he didn't sleep much. He slept for three hours. At 11:30 at night, the phone call came in. His wife answered the phone and said, “The Rabbi is sleeping. Is it an emergency? Should we wake him up?” The arrogance of this young man: he said, “Yes, it's an emergency. Wake up the Rosh Yeshiva.”
The Rabbi washed his hands and came to the phone. Within a few seconds, he could see it was a prank call. Any normal person would start yelling at this kid: “You woke me up. Curse him,” and hang up on his face. But Rabbi Moshe Feinstein started talking to this young man. He said, “What school do you go to?” The kid didn't want to say. He said, “Okay, tell me what you're learning.” The kid told him which masechet (tractate) he was learning in Gemara. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein asked, “Do you know the Gemara?” He said, “Nah.”
“Okay, let me tell it to you.” The Rabbi knew everything by heart. He started telling him the question and answer of the Gemara and went through it. After 10 or 15 minutes, at 12 o'clock at night, he asked the boy, “You understand?” The boy said, “No, I don't understand it.” “Okay, I'll tell it to you again.” Question. Answer. Question. Answer. He went through it. When he finished, he asked, “You understand it?” “No.” Four times, the Rabbi explained the Gemara to him. It took him one hour. After the fourth time, he asked, “You understand it?” The boy said, “Yeah, I do.”
“Okay, now I want to tell you a question on the Gemara.” He told him a question on the Gemara. The kid said, “Wow, that's an unbelievable question.” He said, “Yeah. Tomorrow morning, when you're in class, raise your hand and ask the Rabbi this question. Okay?” Then he hung up the phone.
The kid went to school the next day and raised his hand. The teacher was probably thinking the kid wanted to go to the bathroom. He had never really asked a serious question before. The teacher called on him: “What's your question?” The boy proceeded to ask this bomb question Rabbi Moshe Feinstein had given him the night before. The Rabbi stopped in his tracks. “That's the greatest question. Where did you come up with that question?” The boy said, “Rabbi Moshe Feinstein.” They all started laughing, like, “Yeah, right.” The teacher said, “That's the greatest question. You know something? I don't know the answer. We have to stop the class. I have to research this question more. I'll come back tomorrow. We'll continue.”
The next day he came in and said, “This guy Chaim, and that great question he asked yesterday—I was up all night working on it. I still don't have a complete answer, but let me give you part of it.” He explained it. The whole week the Rabbi was talking about this kid and this question.
Thursday afternoon, the boy came home from school, walked in the front door of his house, and started crying. He ran up to his room. His parents came in and said, “What's the matter?” He was crying and crying and could barely get the words out. He said, “Rabbi Moshe Feinstein believes in me. Maybe I could believe in myself.” He said, “It's the first time this week I actually enjoy learning in school. I never thought I could do it.”
This boy decided to take his learning seriously. He changed his whole life. Today, 50 years later, he has a yeshiva of his own with 400 students. He's one of the greatest rabbis in America. If you interview him and ask, “How did you become so great?” he'll tell you, “Because Rabbi Moshe Feinstein believed in me. Therefore, I believed in myself.” That's a true story.
If Rabbi Moshe Feinstein believed in me, if Rabbi Moshe Feinstein believed in us, we could become great. What about if Hashem believed in us? We have to realize that we're the only child of Hashem, who created us with a purpose.
Whatever it is that you want to accomplish in your life, no one understands that you could do it. No one understands that you could encourage your husband and your children and yourself to say, “I could be part of a Chesed (acts of kindness) organization. I could be part of a school. I could help my friend. I could stop speaking Lashon Hara. I could dress better if I want. I could do anything. I have a piece of Hashem inside of me.” That's what the Torah is impressing upon us. Some of the ways they learn the Midrash are exactly like this: “Be holy, and try to be holy,” because Hashem put a piece of Himself inside of us. We're made from the same DNA as Hashem, so we could be holy too, because we have Hashem inside us.
That's how Rabbi Akiva became so great: because he ultimately believed in himself because his wife believed in him. That's how Yosef was able to withstand the test: because he said, “My father believes in me.” Rabbi Wallerstein taught us, “Every child is an only child,” and every child is special. If you're having a hard time, make sure you build up your kid. Make sure you look for the greatness in him. It's not easy. I'm talking from my own experience. I have children. I know. It's hard. You get nervous, but you have to rewire it. Your kid will resonate if they really feel that you love them and respect them and are in awe of them. If they see that a parent reveres them that way, I'm telling you, they'll respond differently. But if they see you constantly getting nervous and putting them down, they'll feel, “My parent doesn't really hold with me.”
A very important lesson we can learn is that we should all believe in ourselves and become the greatest version of ourselves, and help all the people around us believe in themselves as well. Amen.