We’re in the sixth pasuk (verse), discussing the value of hachanah (preparation). “Vatakam be'od layla” (She rises while it is still night). If somebody were to ask, “Exactly what do I gain by being a prepared person?” We’ve spoken in general about how it’s a great thing, how important it is, but what exactly is the value of preparation, at least in the spiritual sense?
Not in any specific order, I’ll give three different reasons why a person who prepares for what they do is doing a great favor for themselves and for what they’re trying to achieve. Number one: the pasuk says in Yirmiyahu. Hashem said the following message to our people: the word nir is a furrow that they plow before they’re ready to plant the seeds. So the pasuk says, “Do not plant seeds when there are thorns,” which means that before a person plants, it’s worthwhile to clean up the area so that it’s clear of thorns. Why is it so important to clear out the thorns when planting seeds in the ground? There are two important reasons why one must get rid of the thorns.
Number one, when the thorns are growing alongside whatever you planted, they take nutrients from the ground, which makes your product weaker than it should be. The thorns share in and take from the ground what your planting was supposed to get for itself. Another obvious reason to get rid of the thorns is that when you’re ready to cut your perot, your fruits, it’s going to be much more difficult with the thorns around. So the pasuk says, “Make sure before you plant that you clean the area, and then plant your seeds.”
What this means on a life level is that anything a person plants in their life, hoping to produce something from it, is going to have thorns. A person gets into a marriage. He has expectations. He has dreams. He has goals. But a marriage has thorns. If you’re not prepared to get rid of the thorns—the thorns within yourself, the thorns that would disturb the marriage from becoming the great marriage it should be—then if you come into the marriage with your thorns, you’re not going to be able to achieve the goals you planted.
And so it is with anything important. You have children, and they come with thorns: thorns that come from you, and thorns that come from them. If you prepare ahead of time to clear yourself of those thorns, that’s why people don’t get married when they’re born. That’s why we’re not born married. That’s why we don’t get married when we’re still young, because we’re still living with many thorns. If we got married with those thorns, we wouldn’t be able to achieve our goals.
The first 20 years of life are meant for a person to prepare the proper ground within himself to plant all the great things in his life. And so too with raising a child. Raising a child when a person is still young is not really possible in a truly successful way. The hope is that when we’re 20 years old, we’ll be ready, because then we’ll have cleared our thorns and be ready to put in the right seeds. Unfortunately, I don’t know if that really works today. Sometimes you speak to someone who’s 50 years old, and he says, “I wish I’d heard this when I was 20.” But the truth is, he should have heard it before he was 20. He needs to hear it when he’s 15, 16, and 17.
The time of our youth is supposed to be a time of preparation, to get rid of all the thorns that will disturb our marriages and our raising of children. If a young lady and a young man looked at their years that way, they would be doing themselves the biggest favor. The teenage years are preparation years. They’re years of hachanah. It means getting rid of all the things that are disturbing a person, clearing out all the flawed characteristics that need to be more refined. This is the key—we’ll call them the key accomplishments of such an age. I’m not sure most people look at their teenage years that way. But the teenage years are “Niru lachem nir.” It’s clearing the path for your future.
Many young men and young ladies haven’t taken this advice and have parked themselves for 20 years, waiting for their real life to start. Then, when real life hits them, it comes at them like a truck, and they can’t imagine how it’s possible to succeed. They’re living in that reality because they didn’t clear out the thorns. If you don’t clear out the thorns in your life, you’re going to have a much harder time getting the product you’re interested in.
Yaakov Avinu, before he goes to live with Lavan, knows that Lavan is not an easy customer to live with. He spent 14 years learning a certain Torah, a Torah that maybe he didn’t get as much from his Holy Father: a Torah of how to deal with God, and a Torah of how to deal with someone like Lavan. That’s called preparing and getting rid of the thorns, or learning how to clear yourself of those thorns when you’re dealing with them.
It’s not only marriage and raising children. Any important job in life that you take on is going to have thorns. You take a job, and you’re going to have relationship issues. You’re going to have to learn how to deal with the people above you and the people below you. You’re going to have to deal with life issues that come up. The more a person is prepared, the more they’re clearing the road for themselves, so they can reap the benefits of whatever they’re planting.
When you go into something unprepared, you’re going to end up getting hit by things you’re not ready for and aren’t ready to handle. When a person is involved in something, they usually see the greatness that will come out of it. They see the great scenarios that will come from whatever endeavor they’re planting. But the reality of thorns isn’t only in the seeds in the ground. Thorns are a reality. Hashem, as I’ve told you many times, has made the physical world a mashal. The physical world is a parable. It’s as if Hashem says, “Look, when you plant a seed in the ground, the fertile ground is ready to give you the most beautiful results from your seeds. But I put thorns there also to remind you that in life, any great endeavor you have will require you to be aware of the thorns.” If you come in unprepared, you’re going to get hit in a way you didn’t expect, and you’ll probably have a harder time than you imagine, if you achieve any success at all.
Marriage, children, business. A person sets out to learn Torah. He wants to achieve. He wants wisdom. He’s going to hit thorns too. He’s going to have a hard time understanding things. He’s going to struggle with certain areas of learning. Whatever it might be, each person has different struggles. If you’re not prepared for that preparation—by the way, sometimes preparation can just mean that you know it’s coming. That itself is also good preparation. Sometimes you can’t uproot every thorn in your life. But sometimes the fact that you know things are coming your way makes you better prepared to deal with them. If I think I’m going to go learn and everything’s going to be gorgeous and perfect, and then I hit a bump and say, “Oh, I must be in the wrong place,” that in itself is a loss. A person needs to be prepared. Even if they’re not able to uproot everything, they should know that things are coming up along the way and get ready for them.
So that’s one reason. Preparation in life makes such a big difference because it gives you the ability to rip out the thorns that will be there whenever you want to achieve something, or at least to be ready for them.
Number two: what is another reason preparation is so valuable? Everybody knows that when it comes to planning a wedding for your daughter or son, there are many details, many expenses, and much time spent on so many things that we usually don’t spend time on. For example, we have to look for a nice hall. Sometimes that could take a very long time: finding an appropriate hall that can fit the number of guests you’re inviting and is beautiful enough for your taste. There’s the quality of the food and the menu. How much time is spent choosing what we’re serving? There’s the music, the photographer, the videographer, and the invitations. How thick, how large, the lettering, the ink you’re going to use, what color, what you’re writing on the invitation, exactly which wording. Now, everyone gets an invitation three or four times a day. But when it comes to writing your invitation, you sometimes spend days going back and forth. Should we write this word? Take out that word? Should we put this person? Should we write it in this order? Whose name goes first? Unbelievable—it’s an invitation for a wedding. You’ve got to make sure everything is done as well as it can be. How do you send them? How do you send the envelopes? Electronically, through the post office, or hand-delivered? And many, many more details. That’s just the beginning. We haven’t even gotten to the actual hall. So many details. And then the clothing. What are we wearing? The before address, the after dress. What time? So many phone calls to make sure the rabbis are here at the right time. They’re sending out reminders weeks ahead: “Don’t forget.” And on and on.
The question is, why does so much preparation go into something when most people go to a wedding for not more than a half hour—maximum an hour, an hour and a half, a lot? You know, sometimes in some circles they could take a year to plan—excuse me—a year to plan for a wedding that lasts an hour, two hours, three hours. How come so much goes into those three hours? Days, weeks, months—all of it is being put into those three hours. What’s the idea behind that? You would never imagine that three hours could take so much money, attention, energy, and time. You never could imagine three hours of your life. You think of a guy who’s been doing this for three hours, working so hard. This is probably going to be something that’s going to run like Achashverosh’s party. It’s going to go 180 days, and you’re doing all this for three hours. The obvious answer is that when something is important to you, you want to make sure it’s the best it can be, and your preparations are to make it the best it can be.
We could say it’s a rule in life that the more important something is to a person, the more they will invest and prepare for it to happen in the best way. So preparation isn’t merely doing something ahead of time to succeed; it’s also a reflection of how important what you’re about to do is to you. The more important it is to you, the more you’re going to prepare. And the less important it is to you, the more you’re going to prepare. That is a fact of life. That’s a reality Hashem created. When something is important to me, I’m going to invest in preparing. I don’t even realize the connection. It just is that way because it’s important. I am going to prepare. And we can use that as a barometer, as a measuring stick for how important something is to me or to someone else. How can I know if something is important to you? By how much I see you prepare. From the preparation, I can understand how important this event, this meaning, this moment is to you.
For example, there’s a shiur (lesson) that you’re going to at night. Most people go to the shiur, sit down, and start learning, which is beautiful. But then there are people who, before the shiur—maybe on the train, at home, or in the office—you see preparing for the shiur. Now, one would say, “Okay, nice. One guy prepares; one guy does this. One guy will probably have greater success in learning because he’s prepared, and one guy will have less.” But it’s bigger than that. When a person prepares, you understand how valuable it is to him. He’s learning. So if you want to understand how much somebody’s learning of Torah is real and connects to him in a real way, you wouldn’t go to the shiur, because at the shiur all you’ll see is people learning, which is great. But if I want to know what value the person feels his learning has, I won’t be able to get it game time. You’ll only be able to get that when you see what they’re doing before it. The preparation for the learning is an indicator to you and to others of how valuable that learning is during that hour or two, whatever it is.
It’s that way in everything in life. They have deal. So many times, a person is about to go into a sporting event, a game, a very important game. What do you see people doing at an important game? They’re practicing. They’re watching videos to see what the other team is going to do. They’re training every swing. The guy’s been playing baseball for 40 years. He’s still practicing his swing before the game. “40 years you’re doing this?” “No, but that’s a big game. We had to prepare, and I made sure it’s perfect.” Whether it’s amateurs playing or professionals playing, when you see something important, you’ll see people preparing. And vice versa: if you see someone preparing, you understand that what they’re preparing for is important to them. It’s a very important principle in life. You cannot say something is important to you if you’re not preparing for it. Well, you could say it, you could procrastinate, claim it, you could say whatever you want, but Hashem made a rule in life: when something is important to you, you’re going to prepare for it. That’s why in any area of importance, you’ll automatically see people preparing. It’s not even a thought for them. They have to go to school for it. Nobody went to school to prepare for their daughter’s wedding. It’s automatic. It’s important to you, so you prepare.
When do you see that Shabbat is important and valuable to a person? By what they do ahead of time to prepare themselves. There are great people who are ready from Friday morning, worrying about Shabbat, thinking, “Shabbat’s coming soon, so I can’t go here,” because they’re already thinking about Shabbat. The more we’re preparing ourselves physically and mentally for Shabbat, the more clearly important Shabbat is to us. Where are we going to be on Shabbat? Where are we going to eat the meals on Shabbat? Where are we praying on Shabbat? You’ll see people who value Shabbat make sure ahead of time, whenever they go somewhere, that they don’t just end up somewhere on Shabbat and figure it out. Sometimes there’s no choice, but as much as a person can prepare, that shows the value they place on Shabbat.
So too when it comes to tefillah (prayer). How do you know if somebody appreciates and values tefillah? The question is, how well prepared are they for that tefillah? In what way would you say it’s called preparing? In every way. The way they dress, the way they’re prepared to say what they’re supposed to be praying. Meaning, if a person is going to pray, it would definitely be worthwhile to pray in the right way, which would mean understanding what you say. So that means you’re going to have to take some days or some hours out of your life and start learning the words of tefillah. You don’t just want to say the words, which definitely count. Certainly you’re getting something from praying by saying the words. But certainly you do a lot better.
You can also get married by saying “Harei at mekudeshet li” (You are hereby betrothed to me) with two witnesses in the rabbi’s office. You can also do that. It’s also a marriage. But it’s not a marriage anybody here would want. So of course, if you just say the words, it counts. But it’s certainly much more valuable if you’re praying and saying words that you understand. That’s going to require preparation. It will require taking a pen, going to a Siddur (prayer book), and writing down all the words you don’t understand, one paragraph at a time. It might mean going to the store and finding a Siddur that best fits your level of ability to pray the right way. It’s all part of that preparation. It shows how much you value the tefillah.
And you can give more and more examples. We learned a very important principle: Hashem created a world where it’s clear from the preparation how much a person values something. If we see people preparing, we know it’s because they think whatever they’re about to do is valuable. And if they’re not, then they’re not. If we see someone not preparing, we understand it’s not valuable to them. It’s a rule. You can’t fool yourself. You can’t say, “No, it’s very valuable. I just don’t prepare. The game I’m about to play is very important. I’m going to come straight from the bus onto the field.” No, your actions clearly show otherwise. Your proclamation is off.
Now, there’s something else connected to this. We have another rule. Again, rule number one: what’s important to you, you’re going to prepare for. But another rule is that whatever is important to you, whatever it is that you respect, you’ll be able to gain a lot more from it. For example, if you respect your rabbi, you’ll be able to get a lot more out of him than someone who doesn’t respect him as much. Hashem made a world where the amount of respect you have for someone or something determines how much you’re going to be able to get from them. The more value you give your tefillah, the more you’re going to gain from your tefillah. It’s going to give you a lot more than another guy praying right next to you who doesn’t respect his tefillah as much. The more you respect your learning, the more you’re going to gain from your learning, even though the guy next to you is learning the same masechet (tractate), the same Daf (page), for the same amount of time. Hashem made a world where, according to the kavod (respect) you have for something, that’s how much you’re going to get out of it.
One of the reasons a person really enjoys their wedding, their daughter’s wedding, their son’s wedding, and remembers it for more than just the amount of time it lasts—the infusion of excitement that stays with them—has to do with the value they place on it. It makes a very big mark on them. They come home at three in the morning and can’t sleep because they’re still talking about all the different things that happened at the wedding. The next day people are calling them for a review, and they can’t wait to talk about it. They don’t dismiss the phone calls. They want to hear it, again and again, about this and about that. They can hear the same comment 25 times. You know why? Because they’re loving it, sucking out every piece of pleasure from that wedding. You know why? Because it’s important to them. When something is important to you, you’re able to take out every little bit from it and enjoy it. That’s another rule Hashem made. According to the respect, according to how much you care about something or someone, that’s how much you’ll get from them.
That’s why in the Torah, whenever there’s someone you can gain from, the Torah says to make sure you honor him. Honor your father and mother, not only because of Hakarat HaTov, not only because of appreciation, but because you need them. You need them to help you, but you can’t benefit from them if you don’t respect them. Make sure you respect your rabbi. One time a person asked me, “How do you allow people to respect you? I thought you were a humble man. How do you allow people to stand up? Tell them, ‘Don’t stand up.’” He said, “I saw one time a guy kiss your hand. What do you like his hand for?” So I told him, “You’re right, you see him good.” I said, “It all depends on what’s in my mind, and you can’t know it. But the action itself doesn’t necessarily show that I’m looking for respect. You have to understand that the only way people will be able to gain, if I have to give them anything, is if they respect me. So the more respect they have, the more I can help them. So I’m looking to help them. Of course, if I want to take that respect for myself, then you’re right, it’s a big problem.”
In the Torah, in any relationship that a person can gain from, there’s a certain amount of respect. The Torah says, “Make sure you respect your elders.” Even if he’s not a scholar, respect him. Stand up for him. Why? Because you can gain from him. The man has life experience that you can gain from. If you squeezed out of him what he knows about life experience, you would gain tremendously. But unfortunately, in today’s society, it’s not like that. A person gets older; not only do they not respect him, he himself doesn’t respect himself. What does he respect about himself? He’s trying to be a young man. He’s trying to dress like a young man, act like a young man, talk like a young man. And we’ve lost so much wisdom that we can gain from older people, because neither the young person respects them, nor does the older person live according to the standards by which he should earn that respect. He’s still a little kid.
You see, sometimes young men say, “Ah, I love that guy. That guy’s father, he’s like, he’s just like one of us.” That’s a horrible thing. Someone’s father being like one of the boys is not a good thing. It’s not a compliment. It’s one of the worst things they could say about you. It means that you have very little ability to help people, even your own children, because you’ve belittled yourself to become their level, and they cannot respect you as someone of greater value. If they can’t respect you, even when you want to talk to them—even one morning when you wake up and realize, “Oh, let me—this, this one I understand. Let me show my, my son. Let me tell my...” —they’re not going to have it registered the way they should, because they’re lacking the responsible respect.
According to the respect you have for someone or something, you can gain that much from them. When it comes to the korbanot (sacrifices), there’s a certain amount of respect you have to have for them because they’re holy. You can also gain a lot from bringing a korban, from partaking in the korban. But there’s a certain kavod you have to give the korbanot. There are many rules you have to live by when it comes to korbanot, because they can help you, but you have to have respect for them. As Jack mentioned, Shabbat—any mitzvah in reality can be very beneficial to a person as long as they have the kavod for it.
A person could say, “But I don’t understand. I’ve been doing this. I do that. I do so many beautiful things. I don’t feel it’s making a change in me.” It could very well be that you’re not giving it enough kavod, enough respect. The tefillah is not getting enough respect. You’re not giving enough respect. You’re not preparing the way you should be. You’re learning, but you’re not preparing the way you should be, so it shows you don’t have enough kavod for it, and on and on. It’s the same with a person’s relationships: the more kavod you have for your wife, the more you’ll be able to gain from a great wife. The more kavod you have for anything in life, the more you’ll gain from it.
So one more time: what a formula, what a beautiful formula. Look at this formula. The more kavod you have for something or someone, the more you can squeeze out benefits others don’t even know exist. Imagine a guy looks at an orange and doesn’t realize there’s a whole bottle of orange juice in there. He’s thirsty. He needs something to drink. He’s like, “I’m not—I don’t have anything for me. If you have orange, you know it was nothing in the orange. It’s food.” “No, no, there’s—it’s a bottle of juice in there.” You have to know that the important things in life, important people, important situations—you can squeeze them and get so much to fulfill your thirst for what’s needed in life. Just like you squeeze the wedding all the way till the end to get every piece of pleasure out of it, things Hashem gave us in life, like I said—Torah, mitzvot (commandments), tefillah, relate relationships—we get so much good out of them. But it’s on the condition that you respect them. And if you tell me, “Yeah, I do respect them,” I have to ask you one question. This is the question: whether you respect them or not is going to come down to one question. Are you preparing for those people, those situations, those things? If you’re not prepared, that’s an indication that you don’t respect them the way you could and should, and therefore you’re not going to be able to squeeze the juice out of them. You’re not going to be able to squeeze the great juice out of Shabbat if you’re not prepared for Shabbat. It’s not going to happen. “I love Shabbat. I respect Shabbat,” but you don’t prepare for Shabbat, so you’re not going to be able to squeeze out the beauty Shabbat could give you. And so too with any important thing or relationship in life: according to the respect is how much you’re going to gain.
And we’ll know if you receive. Jack’s reminding me of what Hazal tell us. The pasuk says that when David HaMelech got older, the clothing he was wearing wasn’t able to give him the warmth it should. No matter what he put on, it wasn’t working. And Hazal say this was attributed to David HaMelech’s lack of respect for clothing one time. Again, you have to understand: if David HaMelech is being held accountable for one time in his life when he didn’t respect clothing the way he should, by the way, the situation was a very valid reason why he didn’t. Shaul HaMelech was running after him to kill him. He basically had Shaul caught in a cave. He could have killed him. To show him that he wasn’t his enemy, he went ahead and cut his garment to show him, “I was here. I could have done something to you, but I didn’t.” So it wasn’t just a lack of respect. For whatever reason, that was viewed as a lack of respect and held against him: in the end of his life, “Oh, you didn’t respect clothing? You’re not going to be able to gain from clothing.”
Again, you understand from this how great this man was. Of all the things in his life, this is all they have against him: that one time he didn’t give the kavod by cutting something. It’s like a person who has a beautiful, clean white shirt. Clean. Any little stain anywhere on that shirt, people can see it. But if the shirt’s all full of dirt and colors, nobody could see anything on it. If you see that David HaMelech was held accountable for that, you understand how clean this man’s neshamah (soul) is. That small thing was something held against him.
So the bottom line, though, is that the message is very relevant: according to the respect, that’s how much a person is able to benefit. That’s another very important value in the world of preparation. Another great value in preparation, which probably would be overlooked: if I told you, “Could you guess another value in preparation?” I want to hear what you have to say. We have a couple of minutes. Would anyone tell me? So if I gave you two: one, it prepares the earth for your seeds; number two, it shows that you value what you’re doing. Right? Could you give me another reason? I believe no one will come up with it.
Many times in life a person has an endeavor and is involved. He’s doing things. He’s raising his children. He’s married. He’s praying. He’s doing mitzvot. He’s keeping Shabbat. He does. Many times in life—in fact, I think most times in life—we’re involved in many beautiful things. But the goal is not clear. When the goal is not clear, a person could lose focus on what they’re trying to achieve in a marriage. What are you trying to achieve with your children? What are you trying to achieve in your learning? What are you trying to achieve in going to pray? What are you doing? A person can pray for 70 years and never really pay attention to the goal of a tefillah. But if you’re preparing for your tefillah, you cannot prepare for something unless you’re clear about what you’re trying to achieve. What are you preparing for? To actually pray, you don’t necessarily have to prepare. So if you’re preparing for tefillah, it’s obvious that you’re trying to achieve something from this tefillah, and the preparation is to get that achievement, to get there.
When you’re preparing for your marriage, it means you understand there’s a goal to marriage and you’re preparing to achieve that goal. You cannot prepare in a real way if you don’t have a goal. So what preparation does for a person, besides the things we mentioned, is help the person clarify what their goal is and what they’re trying to do. If I have children and just raise them every day and do whatever I do, it doesn’t mean I understand the ultimate goal for them. But if I’m preparing, then obviously preparation has to have the goal in mind, and I’m preparing for it. So preparation actually clarifies to me again and again—not a one-time clarification, but again and again through the preparation—what goal I’m trying to reach. Without preparation, a person can go into this cycle of just doing things, just being married, just raising a child, just learning, just praying, without really appreciating what the goal is. And when you don’t appreciate the goal of something, it’s very hard to achieve what you’re supposed to. You get distracted very easily.
So preparation has tremendous value. When you prepare, it’s not just that you’re clearing the way and clearing the obstacles, like we said. It’s not just that you’re showing how valuable something is to you. You’re actually bringing clarity into your situation, because you’re seeing the goal and working to get there. That’s all in the merit of preparation. Preparation is huge. It’s not merely, “How do I get from step A to step B?” It’s not just about that. We would think, “I have to prepare, otherwise I’m going to be caught in a place where I don’t know what I’m doing.” It’s so much bigger than that. Preparation has tremendous value. It shows so much about the person and allows the person to achieve and receive so much more in their life because of it.
So take preparation with you in life to achieve anything that’s supposed to be valuable. Bring it into your reality and watch how the power of whatever you’re doing and trying to achieve opens up to you in so many ways. That is why the Eshet Chayil is getting up early. She’s preparing not just to make sure everything happens right. It’s so much bigger than that. She gets up early because she understands how valuable her children’s morning is, how valuable it is for them to be calm, and how valuable it is for them to have a mother who is calm and not rushed at the last second. She understands the value and invests. She has a goal. She’s waking up for something. She’s preparing herself for something important.