Good morning, everyone. B'ezrat Hashem (with God's help), I wish you all a beautiful day. Thank you for joining this morning. We're continuing what we were discussing yesterday.
One of the questions—the end of the question that was asked—was: Why do you answer a person who says that we're here in this world to be good and to make the world a better place for our children and grandchildren?
The truth is that this human feeling that we want to be good is one of the greatest testimonies to our soul. Every human in the world wants to be good. In fact, when we do good, we feel good inside of us. And when we do bad, we have a feeling called guilt. These aren't feelings we necessarily went to school to learn how to have. They're natural feelings that humans have. And really, they don't make sense. Think about it. A man works hard to make money, and then he gives away some of what he worked hard for to somebody else. Physically, monetarily, he lost. Maybe he felt he needed to do it, but he lost money in the physical world. Yet we know that when you give someone something of yourself, you actually feel good. Now, where does that feeling come from? Why should a physical body feel good about giving something from the physical world?
We know that when you get something, you feel good because now you have more. But when we sacrifice for others, we actually feel good. There's a good feeling inside of us. When we hurt others, when we embarrass somebody, we feel that something is wrong. Again, we call that guilt. What is guilt? First of all, what is it? Guilt is to the soul what pain is to the body. When a person is in pain, they feel that something is wrong. That means they have to go to a physician. They have to check it out. It's a sign that something is wrong inside them. That is the purpose of pain: to alert someone that he needs to fix something.
When our soul expresses guilt, it's a feeling we don't like; we don't enjoy feeling that way. But the purpose of that feeling is to awaken us to the fact that something needs to be fixed. Maybe we're being too selfish. Maybe we're getting too angry. Maybe we're not showing enough respect to the people around us. Maybe we're not living life in the way that it needs to be lived. And that pain comes out. Again, nothing will ever force us to change anything in our life. That's a rule. We have free choice. These are all tools. Even a person who's in physical pain isn't forced to go to a doctor. That's his free choice. But God gives us the tools to be able to do what we need to do. In the end, though, we have to choose.
So, the very fact that all humans want to be good—that desire to be good—is not something physical. A table doesn't want to be good. A bone doesn't want to be good. A leg doesn't want to be good. Where is the source of that desire to be good, which is not physical? That is a great testimony to the soul of the human. We all want to be good.
Now, the big question we have to ask—and we really cannot continue further in life without asking this fundamental question—is: What is good? We must stop and ask ourselves. We want to be good. In fact, not only do we want to be good, most of us think that we are good. Ask anybody in the street. Stop them. “Are you a good person?” “Yes, I'm good.” So not only do we want to be good, most of us feel most of the time that we are good, except for some mistakes that we make.
But before we get excited about feeling good that we are good, we first have to define what it means to be good. And that might surprise some people. Define what is good? What do you mean? It's obvious: to be a good person. What does it mean to be a good person? That's not such an obvious and simple matter.
Very often in life, we have concepts or ideas that we somehow assume we know, even though we never really investigated what they are. We have an idea inside of us of what they are, and we live our life based on this understanding that we have. Let me give you a mashal (parable). Maybe I'm not being clear. I'm going to tell you a story, a real story that happened probably about 15 or 20 years ago.
There was a man, a Jew from South Africa, who was totally unobservant and had no connection to Judaism. He grew up completely secular. He had never gone to the land of Israel. He had never visited Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel). Toward the end of his life, he finally made a trip to visit Israel. He was a wealthy man, and he spent a few weeks in Israel. They made him an itinerary, and they went to every part of the land. They went to the Galil, to the north. They went to the south. They went everywhere, east to west, north to south. He covered it all.
At the end of his trip, he had a meeting set up for him by an organization that I'm sure many are familiar with. The organization was called Aish HaTorah. Aish HaTorah is an organization in Israel and throughout the world that tries to help unaffiliated Jews become more connected. The founder of Aish HaTorah was a man by the name of Noah Weinberg. He was a very, very intelligent rabbi who had a very beautiful way about him. And he was a big Talmid Chacham (Torah scholar) as well. He started this organization. Anybody who's seen Noah Weinberg, heard him, or read his books sees his chokhmah (wisdom).
So anyway, this old man from South Africa had a meeting with Noah Weinberg at the end of his trip. Aish HaTorah, by the way, is that building you see in Israel, right across from the Kotel HaMa'aravi. It's a beautiful building. Sometimes people have bar mitzvahs (coming-of-age celebrations) there. The man sat down with the rabbi and said, “Rabbi, you know, I've been hearing about the Land of Israel, the Holy Land, all of my life. The Holy Land this, the Holy Land that. I'll tell you the truth: I never came to the Holy Land. I've been hearing about it, but I never came here. I'm telling you, I'm here for two weeks straight. I went to every part of this country, and I don't see any holiness here. All this Holy Land business—I don't see it. Where is it?”
So the rabbi, like a good Jew does very often, answered a question with a question. He said, “Before I answer you, I want to ask you a question. Tell me, do you like bafoof sticks?” I see you guys all looking at me. The man looked at the rabbi the same way you're looking at me. “What? Do I like what?” The rabbi said, “Do you like bafoof sticks?” The man said, “Rabbi, what are bafoof sticks?” The rabbi told him, “That's not the question. We'll get to that later. I'm just asking you now, first: do you like them? Do you like bafoof sticks?” The man told the rabbi, “How can I like bafoof sticks? I don't even know what they are.”
The rabbi said, “Oh. You're looking for the holiness in the Land of Israel? Do you know what holiness is? What exactly were you looking for?” He told him, “You're like a person who's looking for a lost man by the name of Joe. You go all around the city looking for Joe, and after three days of looking for him, you come back and report that you did not find Joe. ‘Can't find him. Not here.’ And somebody asks you, ‘By the way, do you know what Joe looks like?’ And you say, ‘No, actually, I don't.’ He says, ‘How can you look for Joe if you don't know what Joe looks like?’ You're looking for the holiness in the Holy Land, and you're telling me you can't find it. What is holiness? Do you know what it is?”
Now, that's a brilliant response. But I want to tell you that, to me, the beautiful part of his answer—or the story, excuse me, not the answer—or the most amazing part of the story is not so much how the rabbi responded. To me, what's amazing is that here's a man who had no connection whatsoever to Judaism or to holiness, so clearly he knew nothing about it. Yet he was so confident that he knew what it was that he was even looking for it, and so confident that he knew what it was that he was able to tell the rabbi, “I couldn't find it.” It's mind-boggling that a person who knows nothing about what holiness is thinks they know what it is. This happens to all of us on many, many subjects. We have things in our head.
Now, what this man thought holiness was, I don't know. Maybe he thought he would find flying angels with wings. Maybe he thought he would find a man coming down from heaven. I don't know what this man had in his mind. What is holiness? Something he picked up along the way. Maybe he got it from the internet. Maybe he got it when he dreamt something. Maybe he got it from comments people made. I don't know where he got his definition. But in his mind, he already knows what holiness is. And he's so clear about it that he's looking for it.
We do this all the time. We have ideas in our minds that we never actually studied, but in our minds it's obvious that this is the way it is. And that obviousness continues with us throughout our life without our ever examining the definition.
And today's subject is that we all want to be good. Of course we're here to be good people. That's the way we're programmed. It's in our nature. We want to be good. Ask the mafia murderer about himself, and he will talk about the good things he does: how he treats his neighbors so well, how he supports poor people in need. Ask anybody you know about themselves, and they will tell you about their goodness. Walk down the street and call somebody evil. They will be very upset: “Calling me bad?”
Now, what's the difference between being bad and being good? The answer is that we're programmed. Humans do not want to feel like they're bad. It's within our nature. It's an attraction to good. We all have that. But we must never forget to examine what is good. How can we walk around life thinking we're good when we don't even know what good is? And whatever we do know about good, where did it come from? So we may be thinking we're good when we're actually not good. We must examine what is good, because without examining it, we will walk around possibly with the wrong definition. And if you say, “What do you mean? How can I walk around with the wrong definition of good? Good is good!” Really?
Let's look around the world. You know the man in Gaza who blew himself up and killed a hundred innocent people? Do you know that he thinks he's good? He doesn't think he's evil. You may look at him and say, “That guy? Oh, terrorist! Murderer!” In his eyes, he is a Kadosh, he's a holy man. His mother is proud of him. She sent him on the mission to kill himself, like Akedat Yitzchak. The same way Avraham Avinu was ready to kill his son and was proud of it, this mother of the man who went and murdered people is proud of her son. Killing? When they talk about him at a funeral, they talk about a holy man. You and I will say, “That guy is evil. He's evil to the core.” And they'll say, “Evil? The guy is greatness.” This is real life. Two humans looking at something: one guy says, “Awesome, great”; one guy says, “Evil.” What's called good?
How about saving the whales? Is that good? Is that important? Should we be saving the whales? I'm not talking about causing animal suffering. That's not what I'm talking about. But should our life mission be to save the whales or save the bears? That could be a life mission. There are people right now who spend their entire life dedicated to saving whales. So, are they accomplished? Are they living well? Or would that be called a waste of time? Somebody listening would say, “Of course, saving the whales—a great thing. They're also animals. They're also alive. Why not?” Others will say, “What? It's a waste of time. You're spending your time saving whales? Whales are not the purpose of life. What's going on? Why would you do that?” There's disagreement. What you think is good, I think is a waste of time, or vice versa. And you'll tell me, “It's obvious.” Well, good is obvious, and good is not so obvious. To the kid growing up in Gaza, what he's doing is obvious.
Hitler, I can guarantee you, thought he was doing something very good. Hitler did not wake up in the morning thinking he was an evil man. He was actually doing a very big service for the world. He even convinced them that, in order for them to survive, they must get rid of this disease. While you and I might look at these people, these Nazis, and say, “Oh, these guys are evil,” they did not think that. They would fight with you and explain that they were doing something very good.
Is it right to kill? You would say, “No, no, no, no. Killing? God forbid. That's terrible. That's not good. Killing is not good.” How about if we kill someone who's killing others? Is that good? You have a person who's a danger to humanity. So now I want to kill him. Is that a good thing to do? Should we kill someone who kills others? Some will say, “Well, oh, yeah, that's for sure. We should kill him. He's killing others.” Others will say, “What? Not so clear.”
How about abortion? How's that? Is abortion good, or is abortion no good? It's a great question. If this question were asked around the world in the streets right now, you'd get millions and millions of people saying, “Abortion is murder. You're taking a life and killing him. You're killing a baby. The same way if you kill another person, everybody would say that's murder. How could you kill a fetus? He's a life.” And then you'll have millions of people telling you, “What? Do you understand how miserable the mother is going to be when she's going to bring up a child she's not ready to have? You're going to cause suffering to this woman? That's not called murder. He's not a baby yet. He's not alive yet.”
That's a good question. It's not so obvious to me. Again, if you grew up thinking that abortion was murder, then you think, “Oh, it's bad to murder.” And if you thought the other way, you think—where we get our information, we don't always get it because we analyzed it and worked on it. We grew up thinking, “Oh, yeah, abortion is bad. Okay, fine, it's bad.”
It's nonstop. Almost every subject we could discuss can have two sides. Stealing. Is it wrong to steal? So you would say, “Of course, stealing is terrible.” But what about stealing from people who have a lot of money when there are people in the street who are so poor they don't have the ability to put food on the table, and these rich people have so much money they don't need it and are taking advantage of the poor people? The poor guy is working day and night and can't put food on the table. And here's this wealthy guy throwing out money left and right, with so much left in his bank account that he can't even use it.
Now, you might say, “It doesn't matter; it's stealing.” Others might say, “What do you mean, stealing? They're killing us. We're going to riot. We're going to go take their goods. That's a good thing. We're saving our children from these evil people who don't let us live life.”
What about an 85-year-old sick man who's sitting in a hospital bed and needs medical attention? Should we save his life? Should we waste our time helping him? I mean, even if he makes it, what about quality of life? How much is he going to enjoy? Is it worth it for him to live anyway? There are many hospitals around the country, even in our own city, that will look at a person and say, “That guy's not worth it. He's not worth the help.” Is that called murder? Is that called good? Or is it called bad?
By the way, this class is given to Eliyahu Chaim ben Adel. I'm sorry, I forgot to announce that in the beginning. These questions are endless. Compassion. Should we have compassion? Everyone says, “Of course. Compassion, it's a good thing.” What about compassion for a bad person? Should we have compassion on people who do wrong? I'm not sure. Should we have compassion on people who go out and hurt others? Should we put them in jail? “No, that's not compassionate. Putting someone in jail is not compassionate.” “Well, it is compassion.” “It's not compassion.”
Guess what? Is it okay to murder? What would you say right now? What would you tell me? Is it okay to murder? You would say, “No, murder, I mean, that's obvious. It's obvious. Common sense.” Can I ask you a question? When did this sense become so common? How is it common sense? What we think is common sense is not necessarily common sense. Is it okay to murder? You'll tell me, “Absolutely, this is wrong.” And if I ask you, “Why is it wrong?” you'll tell me, “What? Who are you to take somebody's life? What gives you any right to take somebody's life? Here's a guy, alive, eating, drinking, enjoying, has a family. You're going to kill him? It's obviously wrong.”
Ah, wait a second. So I have a question for you. Are you going to have meat tonight? Are you going to have steak tonight? Are you going to have chicken tonight? Are you going to eat fish tonight? You know someone murdered that fish? Someone murdered that cow? Someone killed that chicken? How are you eating meat? What will you tell me? You'll say, “Ah, no, that's different. That's different.” Why is that different? “You know, they're for us.” Who told you that? How do you decide these things? You have a cow, alive and well, eating, drinking, with a family life, with children, and you're going to murder the animal because you decided this is good for you to eat the meat? So if you like the meat of a human, you would do the same thing? It's good for you also? To be good. How did you decide that? Who told you that?
And then there'll be people who say, “You know what? You're right. You're right. You're right. You're 100% right. Murder is murder. I don't care who you kill. I'm going to be vegetarian.” Can't murder? Is that right? Is that good? Let me ask you: Is it good? I don't know. Is it the right thing to do, to be a vegetarian? So is it wrong to be a person who eats meat or fish? I don't know.
Guess what? If we had a call right now for people to come voice their opinion, I bet there'd be a lot of people. There'd be millions and millions of people out there who'd say, “What? Murdering animals? Murderers, all you eaters of animals, of meat and chicken and fish.” And we would look at them and say, “What? These guys, they're so lost.” So which one is good? What's the right thing? Can anybody here really come out and say, “You know what? I'm going to prove that I'm right”? Go ahead, try to prove it. Try to prove that it's okay to kill a cow but not okay to kill your neighbor. Go figure that out.
I'm giving you a few examples. I could sit here from now, probably for another month straight, giving you examples of things in this world that may be very obvious to you, while somebody else will find the opposite very obvious. There's no end. It's on and on and on. And if you tell me, “Well, everybody's right. Everybody's good,” that is not true. You know that's not true. Everybody can't be good if they're arguing with each other. If I tell you that murdering a cow is bad, and then the other person says it's good, they can't both be good.
I even talk about religions. Forget about it. There are billions of people right now who believe in one thing and say the other religion is wrong. And the other billions of people are saying, “No, we're right. You're wrong.” Well, who's good? Literally, we're like the South African man who had no connection to Kedusha, to holiness, but was so confident that he knew what it was and was even looking for it. In many ways, we're like that person. We grew up knowing that we want to be good. It's obvious. And we just start picking things up from the newspapers, from our dreams, from our thoughts, from... And we just have this picture that we call good, and we try to live within that picture. Then we start fighting for it. We march for it. We argue with the other person. All without really knowing what makes something good.
Yes, we are here in life to be a good person. It's true. But guess what? You don't have to be a genius to say that. That's something already programmed within us by nature: we want to be good. Anybody who comments that we're here to be good hasn't said anything. The real challenge is to know what is good. And you don't want to make a mistake about that. You can live your whole life thinking or trying to be good, and one day you may realize that wasn't good. You know, I was really murdering. I was really not helping people. I was compassionate toward the wrong person. And on and on. We must analyze what good is.
So anybody who says, “Yeah, we're here to be good,” we agree with them. But what is good? What is it? Can you define it? Because in every avenue in life, every avenue, you're going to have this question.
If you're a Jew, we have our own codes of what's expected of us—not necessarily of the world. We're the only religion, by the way, to my knowledge. We're the only religion, at least among the major religions, that says you don't have to be Jewish to be good. You don't have to be Jewish. You could be non-Jewish and be good. You could be one of the pious among the world's people. And you go to... We don't look for, we don't have missionaries. Nowhere in our history did we ever find that Am Yisrael went out to look for people to convert them.
In fact, our laws tell us that when someone comes to convert, first try to talk them out of it. Tell them, “What do you need this headache for? It's a responsibility. You're taking on a new code of law. It's very hard. Are you sure you want to do this?” We don't rush to accept a convert, because we believe you're doing good also. You could be a good guy. But as Am Yisrael, we have a higher responsibility. We have more to do in life, and therefore we have more laws.
So to be a good Jew is different from being a good Goy (non-Jewish). A good Goy is good, but a good Jew has a different level. Just like, for example, if you have a prince, you could be a good regular person, but that might not be good enough for a prince. To be a good prince, you have to be on a different level. We, Am Yisrael, have our own definition of what it means to be a good person and what it means to be a good Jew.
What does it mean to be a good Jew? What does it mean? What does it mean? To give charity? How much charity? To whom? Let's say I give charity to save the environment. Is that called charity? That sounds good. The environment's important. It's helping mankind. Is that where I'm supposed to give my money? Should I give my money to poor people who need it? Should I give my money to who? To where? What's called good? What's called being a good Jew?
To keep Shabbat? What does it mean to keep Shabbat? How do you keep Shabbat? “Well, I don't work.” Who says that's not keeping Shabbat? Oh, it is. What are the rules? How do you assume that you know what Shabbat is? How could you know what it is? You picked up things when you grew up and thought, “Oh, it's a day of rest.” So what's a day of rest? A day of rest is when you relax, you don't go to work, so you're resting. It's ongoing. You're in a car resting. Maybe it is resting. Maybe it's not resting.
To me, I walk every Shabbat probably seven or eight miles. If you told me I could get in a car, I'd rest much more. I tell you that. So am I keeping Shabbat now? I'm not resting on Shabbat. I'm exhausted. Once Shabbat comes, I'm very tired. I didn't rest. So maybe I should sleep all Shabbat. Is that good? What am I supposed to do? What is Shabbat? What is anything that we do? What is it? How do we know we're doing the right thing? And the fact that we think it's the right thing—we should be very careful about that. Because most people in the world think they're doing the right thing. The guy doing the opposite of you is doing the right thing also.
Judaism says that the only thing that's good is that which we find in the Creator of the world. The entire Torah is basically coming to answer this question. The entire Torah that we have is coming to answer this fundamental human quest.
You know, in Athens, Socrates used to walk around in the street and ask people, “So, how do you live? How do we live?” There was a famous philosopher who would walk around with a candle in the streets of Athens. He would put the candle on people's faces and ask them, “I'm looking for a genuine man. A genuine man.” Genuine means someone who's emet (truth), someone who really understands life. We, Am Yisrael, don't need candles. We don't need to walk around the streets. We were given the document and the values of what's called good.
You ask me, “Is it wrong to kill a cow? To eat it?” I have no idea. Anyone who tells you they have an idea, you have to really get them to talk to you, to explain how they would know this. But I know that eating a cow is fine, because the Creator says—see, the Creator is the source of all good, and what He says is good is good. So if He tells me that eating a cow is good, it's good. If He tells a Jew, “For you, you have to eat it and slaughter it this way,” that's good for you. If He tells me causing suffering to a cow is wrong, it's wrong. You can't cause pain to animals. That's what our Torah says. Others might say, “Who cares? They're animals.” The Torah says no. You're not allowed to let an animal suffer. They're codes.
Yet murder is terrible. Abortion, is it or isn't it? Go ask the Creator. He'll tell you what's good or what's not good. He'll tell you who to help and how much to help. Can I steal from someone who's wealthy to give it to someone who's poor? Here's this guy; he doesn't need the money. Anyway, it's not his money. The world doesn't belong to us. The world belongs to the Creator. Who are we kidding? We come into this world, we have a few years, we check out. Do we really own something? Who's the owner of this world? So what's the difference? Let me take some money from this guy and give it to that guy. Give it to that guy. Well, the Creator has what to say about that. He has what to say about marriage. He has what to say about money. He has what to say about charity. He has what to say about every single subject there is in life. He has what to say about it.
The entire Torah is coming to tell us this very fundamental answer. Without it, a person could be searching in darkness with a candle in his hand. Until today, he will be lost. For thousands of years, they're looking in the streets with candles, searching for what's called good. We, Am Yisrael, have an answer: we really don't know what is good. But when we look to find what's good, we ask our Creator, who created this world. Only He knows what's considered good and what's considered no good.
Yes, we're here to be good. All of us. But we must know the definition of good in every single subject, every single area. That's a life mission. All of us have a life mission: not just to live to be good, but to know what it means so we can live by it. I wish you all a wonderful day and a beautiful Shabbat. Shabbat Shalom.