Vayedaber Hashem el Moshe lemor, “Asseh lecha shtei chatzotzrot kesef; mikshah ta’aseh otam.” Make for yourself two trumpets made out of silver. Mikshah means all together. “Ta’aseh otam mikshah”: you should make them mikshah, which means one piece. You should make them from one piece of silver. “V’hayu lecha lemikra ha’edah.” And these trumpets will be for you to call the congregation together. You blow the trumpets, and everyone knows that they are supposed to assemble. It’s machanot, all the different camps. When they blow these trumpets, the entire congregation will come to you, to the front, to the entrance of the Ohel Moed. Then they start to tell you different things. If you blow only one blast, then the nesi’im come; only the heads of the tribes come. If you make a teruah (alarm blast), then all the camps start to go east. He gives different ways to blow, to signal who comes: just the head of the tribe, to assist, and so on. Basically, it’s about how to gather the people together. Then he tells you how to call the Kohanim (priests). Then he says a new thing about trumpets: when there comes a war in your land, with an enemy trying to oppress you, you should blow the trumpets, and you’ll be remembered before your God. Hashem, blow the trumpets and Hashem will remember you, and you’ll be rescued and saved from your enemies.
So this last pasuk (verse) seems to say a new idea. Until now, the idea of the trumpets was to gather people together, to call the heads of the tribes, the Kohanim, or the regal or the hokam. Different ways to call them, different sounds to blow. Now he’s telling you that, in the face of war and battle, when you have an enemy trying to kill you, you should blow the trumpets. Then you will be remembered before God your Lord, and He’ll rescue you from your enemies. There’s no explanation of why blowing the trumpets will cause God to remember us and bring about our salvation. It doesn’t say a word. Just blow the trumpets.
HaRambam, however, in Hilchot Ta’anit, the Laws of Fasting, brings this passage and explains it much more thoroughly. He says that when they blew the trumpets during a war—and not only during a war, but during any other et tzarah, any other terrible thing happening to the Jewish people—they were to blow the trumpets to gather all the people together and tell them, “This is not a mikreh. This is not an accident. This is not just a random event. This is not minhago shel olam. This is not the way of the world.” If there’s a tragedy, a war, or an enemy trying to kill you, it’s a sign for you to make teshuvah (repentance) and pray. You blow the trumpets to bring the people together and alert the congregation. You’re alerting the people that we have an et tzarah, a dangerous time for the Jewish people. Hashem wants to see us make teshuvah. That’s the main first thing He wants to see us change.
We don’t really know why bad things happen. There could be millions of reasons that Hashem has, but we know one thing: anything that happens is from Hashem. Nothing happens through men, through people, or through events, or natural events like lightning. Nothing happens by itself. Everything is controlled by Hashem, and we know it’s from Hashem. Why is Hashem doing it? We don’t really know. It could be a punishment; it could be a wake-up call; it could be a berachah, a blessing in disguise. We don’t know why bad things happen when they happen. We know we have to have one response: we have to make a cheshbon hanefesh, we have to start thinking about ourselves and how we can better ourselves. That doesn’t imply that our sins will bring us punishment. Maybe it’s not a punishment; maybe it’s a blessing in disguise. It may be a wake-up call. Nonetheless, Hashem wants to use the bad things that happen to us to help us change, to help us get better, because the best time to change is when you’re serious and you’re not in fantasyland or living in Hollywood, but living in the real world.
As the pasuk says, “Better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a party. Better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a party.” Why is it better? Let’s say there’s a wedding. It’s better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a wedding or a party. Why? Because life puts serious thoughts about life into your mind. You realize that it’s a house of mourning. You realize that life is fragile. It’s not forever. Things happen, and you start to reflect on how you want to live your life in a better way.
In the same way, there are certain places that make us more earnest in our approach to growing, changing, and becoming better, like a beit avel, a house of mourning. It’s more conducive to that than going to a party. So too, when bad things happen to us—even though we don’t know why they happen—maybe it’s not a punishment at all. Maybe Hashem knows what He’s doing. He’s decreeing.
A source says there are really two ways God behaves when He does bad things. Either bad things happen as punishment—we’re being punished for our sins, measure for measure. We deserve punishment for our sins, so we have to be punished. That’s one system. Then he says there’s another system that has nothing to do with punishment, with punishing us for our sins. He says many times bad things happen because it’s a decree. It should happen. He says that the majority of bad things that happen at the end of our exile—the end of our exile is called ikveta d’Meshicha, an expression meaning the footsteps of Mashiach, which means he’s almost here. We hear him down the hallway. He’s almost imminent. That’s the end of Yom Kippur. That’s the end of our exile. You know, when Mashiach comes, there will be a geulah, a redemption from our exile. We’ll have a total redemption. But until that redemption comes, until that geulah comes, at the very end, before the geulah comes, there’s going to be a period when a lot of bad things happen.
He says that during that period, a lot of bad things are happening. The majority of the bad things that are happening are not punishment. He writes that the majority of the tragedies at the end of our exile are not punishment. They are rather decrees that God knows He has to decree to bring the world to its end, to fix all the things that have to be fixed in the world. We don’t know the reason for the decrees. Nonetheless, even if it’s a decree of God and not punishment, we still have to use that situation to make teshuvah. Hashem wants us to make teshuvah when it’s easiest to do so. When is it easiest? When bad things are happening, when suddenly it’s more serious and we realize things are happening. We think differently; our priorities are much clearer. When our minds are clearer, that’s when Hashem wants us to act. Just as Hashem wants us to go to a beit avel rather than to a party, in a beit avel you can think more clearly and seriously. You’re not affected by the Hollywood of it. So too, when bad things happen, that’s the best time to think and analyze your life.
So Rambam, in Hilchot Ta’anit, writes this line. He says that the mitzvah of sounding the trumpets—what does it mean that when you sound the trumpets, God remembers you and saves you? It means that the sounding of the trumpets alerts you to the et tzarah, to the very difficult time we’re having now. It awakens you to make teshuvah. Then your teshuvah is what brings the salvation. Whenever bad things happen, our first approach has to be to make teshuvah and then cry out to Hashem for help. But we have to change before we cry out to Hashem for help. We have to show Hashem that we earnestly want to do His will. We have to make a change for our nefesh (soul). We have to look into our lives: are there things I can improve on? We should be smart about how we do it. We shouldn’t try to do everything, or jump to the top of the ladder; we should go one rung at a time. Nonetheless, we have to think about how we can elevate our lives and change for the better. That’s our obligation when things are happening. That’s how the Rambam explains this pasuk.
The pasuk only says that when war comes into your land, with an enemy that wants to destroy you, you should blow the trumpets and you’ll be remembered before God. You know why you’ll be remembered before God? Because the blowing of the trumpets alerts you to make teshuvah, and your teshuvah, your repentance, and your elevating your life and changing it for the better will really cause Hashem to save us, and we’ll be rescued from our enemies.
This is a very important line, but there’s one question that always bothers me. Obama’s explaining this concept of blowing trumpets when there’s a difficult thing or war or enemy, when bad things are happening, blow trumpets and get the people together and talk to them about making teshuvah. But there’s no mention of it in the Pesukim. You read the Pesukim, and there’s no mention of making teshuvah. It just says that when an enemy comes, when a war comes into your land and there’s an enemy trying to hurt you, low trumpets, and you’ll be remembered before God your Lord, and you’ll be rescued from your enemy. It doesn’t mention a word about making teshuvah. It’s true that Rambam explains it that way, but how come the Torah doesn’t mention it? How come the main idea of blowing the trumpets, that you should be remembered before God, is not the blowing of the trumpets? It’s not something magical, some magic power in the trumpets, so that when you blow them you’re suddenly rescued. That’s not the concept. The concept of the trumpets is summoning the people together to alert them that there’s a war outside. We have to make their Shabbat. And it’s their Shabbat that saves us. So, ikar chaser min hasefer. The main point is missing from the book. That’s what’s bothering me.
But I was talking on Shabbat with somebody, and he came up with a very simple idea. The Jewish people clearly knew that when bad things happen, the first and foremost approach is to look into your deeds and think about how you can elevate your life and change for the better. Everyone has that in them. That’s how the Jewish people were. They all knew that. But sometimes you have to alert them that there’s a war going on. Sometimes you have to alert them that there’s a problem. You blow trumpets. But once you blow trumpets to alert them that there’s a problem, that there’s an et tzarah, that this is a difficult time, it’s automatically understood that the people are going to make teshuvah. And that’s why you’ll be rescued. That’s why Hashem’s going to remember you. He’ll remember you because He’s going to see your teshuvah, and therefore save you.
This is very apropos of what’s happening today. I said this a little bit on Shabbat. We have a seudah (meal) right after we pray. It’s a seudah, everyone’s very joyous, singing, drinking a little bit, and having a kiddush (Shabbat blessing). It’s a good time. It’s almost forgotten that there’s a war going on, that missiles are being sent every day and night. Last night, at 1 o’clock, there was an alert, and everyone had to go to the safe room. Then they finally came out of the safe room and went back to sleep; at 4 o’clock, again, back to the safe room. That’s how they’ve been living for the last week or so, in the safe room all day long. The Iranians know how to do it; they’re spacing it so that when we get to sleep, that’s when we’re tired. They wake us up, and then wake us up again.
About 10% to 15% of the missiles being shot are getting through. They send 30, 40 missiles, and five to six missiles get through. They’re having an impact; they’re hitting. The buildings are destroyed. A whole building in Tel Aviv is destroyed. One of the ladies in the class told me that her husband, who had lived in Israel until now and has an office in Tel Aviv, sent me pictures of the office totally destroyed, totally destroyed. He would have been in the office now, without a question. The building in Tel Aviv was totally destroyed. What’s going on is not simple. People are dying, and hundreds and hundreds of people are already in the hospitals. Hundreds are in the hospital, and I don’t know how many people are dead. Almost 25 people are dead. It’s not easy; things are happening. We’re in a war. Sometimes you think we’re winning the war and it’s going to be over in a few days, and we hope that will be so. Trump is talking as if a deal is imminent. They’re still going to cave in, hopefully. But we have to know it’s the et tzarah, and we have to sound the trumpets. We have to alert everyone: this is the et tzarah; there’s a war going on. We can’t have business as usual. We can’t have life as usual. We have to feel that something is happening to the Jewish people.
The Jewish people that have been killed, the Jewish people that have been injured, there’s many hundreds in the hospital already. These missiles are very large. They’re very big, and when they crash, they destroy the whole building. The whole neighborhood gets destroyed. They’re coming everywhere. In Bnei Brak, a man died yesterday. A missile had never come to Bnei Brak before, and everyone thought Bnei Brak was protected because it’s very old. It’s old; it’s not protected anymore. A couple of missiles came, one of them directly to Bnei Brak, one right next to Bnei Brak, near an unidentified place, right next to it. There’s a war, and our people are in the war. We have to do two things: teshuvah and tefillah, repentance and prayer. Pray. Say a Tehillim. Say a chapter of Tehillim every day.
I remember two years ago, when the first started, not the seventh started. I remember the girls in the lawn; they were too intense, too nervous. I wanted to ease them up. I said, “Listen, don’t say the whole Tehillim. You’re too intense. Just one passage at the end of the Amidah (standing prayer), when you pray, at the end of the Amidah: ‘Please, Hashem, rescue me.’ Have in mind Eretz Yisrael, for the people of Eretz Yisrael, for the soldiers. Have in mind that everyone should be safe. One thought.” The purpose was to take away the intensity, but it turned out the opposite way in my prayers, at least. It became a reminder that the war was going on, because I had habituated myself to say that prayer at the end of the Amidah. I always remember when I’m praying, “Oh, I’ve got to pray for the Jews in Israel,” because we forget.
We got so used to the Iron Dome being almost 100% effective that we’re not nervous at all. I have grandchildren; they’re not going. When the sirens go off, I’ve now been in the office, and until now, when the sirens sounded, they never left to go to the safe room. Well, where would they go? It never happened. There never was a hit. They sent 300 ballistic missiles and fired a couple hundred drones. The Iranians did this in the past six months or a year ago; I forget which it was. Not one landed. One landed in an empty field. So we got so used to the miracles of God that it became second nature. We don’t have to worry. But suddenly they’re landing. 15% of them are landing, which is a high percentage. 15% are landing. It’s not so simple anymore. When they land, they cause tremendous devastation.
Now people are dead, people are in the hospital, people are injured, and people are in shock. So we have to awaken ourselves. The idea is that you have to sound the trumpet. You have to talk about it. “Hello, we have a problem. You have to do something about it.” That’s the trumpets of today. We don’t have trumpets today, but we can talk to the people. We have to talk to ourselves. It’s a time to make—it’s a time to do something to show Hashem our hearts are with You, and we want to awaken mercy. How do we awaken mercy? How do we achieve what the pasuk says, that you’ll be remembered before God? How are you remembered before God? Because of your tefillah, and then you’ll be rescued from your enemies. That’s what you have to have in mind. We see how important it is.
There’s a very interesting Or HaChaim on next week’s parashah—on this week’s parashah. On this week’s parashah, it’s the meraglim, the spies. Now we know the story of the spies in general. The spies started off as great, great men. They were called anashim. Anashim is an expression of important people. They were tzaddikim (righteous people). They were great people; they were heads of tribes. Rambam goes into the question of what the order is based on when they name the 12 tribes. He says it’s not based on the tribes or on birth; we’re trying to figure out what it’s based on. He says it’s based on greatness. They were listed in the Torah according to their greatness. According to their greatness, Yehoshua became the next king of the Jewish people, the successor of Moshe Rabbeinu. After Moshe Rabbeinu passed away, Yehoshua began the next rule of the Jewish people. He was number five on the list. That means there were four people greater than Yehoshua on that list, and Yehoshua was the greatest. He was the one who took over from Moshe Rabbeinu. As great as he was, there were four people greater than him on that list, and the others on the list were probably just as great as he was.
He was a very great suddenly came, and yet they went out 40 days or 40 nights. They went, and no one noticed them. An unbelievable miracle happened. I never noticed them. Twelve spies, all big guys, came in, and no one looked at them. There were different miracles happening. At the end of the 40 days, they spoke, and they said, “There’s no question. As you say, there’s a landslide. It’s a great place, but it’s not easy to live here. The land consumes those who live there. Everyone’s dying.” Hashem did a miracle and made the people of the nations living there all die when the spies came. Why not make them all die naturally? In order to keep the people preoccupied with their own grief, so they wouldn’t notice the spies. It was chesed Hashem, the tremendous kindness of God, that suddenly, in every block they walked through, there were funerals. Everyone was dying at that time. This was chesed Hashem, the kindness of God, to help the spies not be noticed. Everyone was preoccupied with their own grief; they weren’t looking at who was around or noticing that strangers were there. They weren’t taking care of themselves. They were wrapped up in their own grief and weren’t noticing anything. That was how Hashem enabled the spies to walk around the entire area of Israel unnoticed.
But instead of saying that, they said, “This must be a land where you can’t live. Everyone’s dying. There must be something wrong with the water or the air. There must be something in this land that’s killing everybody.” What they were really saying was that God wanted us to go to a place to die. God wanted to kill us. That’s what they were really saying. Then they started talking about the giants they saw there. They were tremendous giants, and they said, “You know what they’re going to do? They’re going to kill us, and they’re going to take our women and children and molest them and rape them.” They started to describe a terrible horror story if we went to Israel, to the point that all the people started to weep, and the people didn’t want to go. They cried the whole night. That was the story.
The first question we have to ask ourselves is: how do you go from being gedolim, great people, to committing a terrible, terrible sin? How do you fall so quickly? It’s a very good question, because the Chovot HaLevavot says an unbelievable thing. The Chovot HaLevavot writes in his book, Chovot HaLevavot, called The Duties of the Heart. It’s a very famous Musar book written in the Middle Ages by Bachya ibn Pakuda, a very great man. It was considered, until Mesilat Yesharim came along, probably the first and foremost book of Musar, of ethics, for the Jewish people. Mesilat Yesharim was written in the 1700s, in the early 1700s, I think, and it became the big one; people took Mesilat Yesharim as perhaps an even greater book. But there are two great books: Chovot HaLevavot and Mesilat Yesharim.
In the Chovot HaLevavot, he makes an amazing statement. How do you reach an appreciation of Hashem? How do you become a person who feels a certain awe of God and wants to submit yourself to follow God? How do you reach that? How do you know so much about His greatness? God is invisible. It’s hard to really see Him. How do you get the—And he says an amazing thing. He says that when you see Gedolei Yisrael, when you see great gedolim, great people, that fills you with a little understanding of what greatness is. From those great people, you start to see: if they’re great, how much greater were people in the early generations? And even in the early generations, how much greater were they when they were prophets, way back before 2,000 years ago? And among the prophets, how much greater were the earlier prophets than the later prophets? You start to understand the greatness a human being can reach. Through that, you start to appreciate the greatness of God. He says that is the derech (way) by which you really get inspired by Hashem. You’re inspired by the greatness of God by seeing the greatness of great tzaddikim. Their greatness inspires you to appreciate greatness, to appreciate God’s love. From that love of God, you start to go back.
I remember I was a very lucky man. I was a head to be close to many kids. I drove a great rabbi for three years, every Monday and Thursday, almost. I used to work those two days. I used to be in the yeshiva five days, but on those two days I helped my mother in the store. When it was slow, I used to take my car over the bridge, go to the yeshiva and try to be with him, watch him learn, and get inspired. Then, after a while, I became an official driver and drove him home every Monday and Thursday. I got close to him, spoke to him, and saw an unbelievable person of greatness.
Rabbi Davis was also one of the real greats we saw. My brother-in-law, Rabbi Rosenblum, was one of the greatest people of the last generation. I was very zocheh to see greatness in great people. Because I was zocheh to be close to great people, naturally I became a zochehite. Not enough, not the way I should have, but I had help, tremendous help, from meeting these great people. That’s why I feel bad for the present generation, who are not zocheh to see as many of the great people that I was zocheh to see, that the previous—
That’s how you become inspired: when you see a Rosh Yeshiva, and you see that he doesn’t stop thinking and learning, he doesn’t stop saying. I used to walk him from the yeshiva to the car, and as he walked, he repeated Mishnayot. He used to go through 18 chapters of Mishnayot every day, by heart, saying them over. Suddenly a boy comes and stops him: “I want to introduce the rabbi to my kallah (bride). I just got engaged.” “Oh, the boy, the girl, bless them.” He would talk to them. The minute they were beyond his vision, he went back to Mishnayot, saying them over. He got to the car. “Open the door for me.” So the car is moving. “My house is still moving.” I get in the car. He’s still moving. I start the car and put it into drive. That’s when he stops and turns to me: “Do you have any questions?” And okay, that’s how we started, but until then, he was learning. I never saw him stop writing. He was always writing, writing, writing. He wrote hundreds of books, hundreds of books. I saw a greatness beyond understanding how great he was. He knew every question.
I once took him home from a wedding, and five of the top people of that generation were waiting for him to answer some questions. There was Rabbi Hirschquist, Moshe Hillel Hirsch, who today is among the Gedolei Hador. He was late with that. In my days, he was there in 1967, 68. Shimon Eider was writing a book on Shabbat. There were about four or five gedolim. Each one asked him a question on a different topic. Before they could get the question out of their mouths, he knew exactly what they wanted to ask. He had the answer. He would give the answer before they finished the question, like a machine gun. Each of the five different men had a different subject. Everything was clear, amazing.
I remember it was Erev Shabbat (Shabbat eve), 1965, Erev Pesach (Passover eve), 1965. My father had died a month earlier in 1965. He died on Taanit (fast day), right the day before. Now it was the 30th day later, and I didn’t know whether I could shave or not, so I asked what the halacha (Jewish law) was. I went early in the morning and prayed with him. I was with him the whole morning, and now I was taking him home in the afternoon for a haircut. I remember talking to him very clearly. Before I took him to the car to pray Mincha (afternoon prayer), in the back room of the shul they were in, there were a bunch of beggars, very poor people sitting in the back. They used to collect money, and they all came to me after Mincha for money. I put it in his hand, and he started giving them money one by one. One of the guys looked at the money he gave him, looked at his arm, and threw the money back in his face. As soon as that happened, they wanted to kill the guy. “Leave him, leave him.” He ran to his coat, got his wallet, and took out some 20s. I saw them; it was a lot of money in those days. He wrapped it up, put it in the man’s hand, shook his hand, and blessed him. I saw royalty. The guy threw the money back in his face. He didn’t even touch him. He was just there for the guy. He thought, “He doesn’t have money; he needs more money. Let me give him more money.” Instead of telling him, “What are you doing? I give you money and you throw it in my face,” as all the other guys around wanted to kill this guy to throw things back in Ramos’ face, he showed humility and greatness of character.
Normally, you see these great people and become inspired to be like them, to learn like them, to get closer to Hashem because of them. Here it’s the opposite. These were great, great people, very great people, and yet they caused the whole nation to sin. If you don’t learn properly from these great people, and these great people do something wrong, they become teachers who teach you wrong, God forbid.
So, the whole story of how they fell in Sombra. Right before I get to that whole story, I just want to bring out one point. It says that right away He punished them. His spies were punished right away. And Or HaChaim asks a question. Normally, the way God works is that if you commit a sin, all your deeds are written in the book, but Hashem doesn’t punish you for the sins in the book. There’s a midah, a quality Hashem has called Erech Apayim. Erech Apayim means very patient, long-suffering, very patient. He doesn’t punish you right away. Why? He wants to give you the chance to make teshuvah, to repent. If you repent, He doesn’t have to punish you, because the miracle of repentance is that repentance is very simple. “Hashem, I’m sorry I did something wrong, and I will never do it again.” Charatah, kabbalah: remorse for what you did and a commitment never to do it again. That’s simple. That’s teshuvah. When a person does that, magically the sin—it never happens. Hashem reaches back into the past and cuts it out of the movie. It never happened. It’s not part of your life. That’s the miracle of teshuvah. Hashem wants us to make teshuvah. Instead of punishing us, make teshuvah and get rid of the sin. If you get rid of the sin, there’s nothing to punish.
But normally Hashem has this midah of Erech Apayim. Hashem is patient. He doesn’t punish us right away. So how come, in the case of the spies, who were great tzaddikim, they did a sin—why didn’t He punish them right away? Why didn’t He have patience? What happens to Erech Apayim, to long-suffering patience, when Hashem waits for us and gives us a lot of time to repent? He says a very interesting thing. He says a number of things. Let me look it up. I’ll read it inside. He asks why the following pasuk is repeated. He tells the story a few times, and we know that they caused the Jewish people to sin, and so on. Suddenly he repeats the pasuk: the people Moshe sent came back and spoke badly about us against the whole nation. They spoke badly to the whole nation. They spoke badly about the individual, and they all died, these people, with the plague Hashem brought. He’s saying it’s redundant. We know who they were. We know that Hashem sent them. We know that they came back to give a report. We know that they caused the people to sin. We know all that. Why is it being repeated? It’s being repeated to teach us: how come Hashem didn’t have patience with them? Normally, Erech Apayim is the midah, one of the 13 midot Hashem has, a mercy. Hashem is patient. He doesn’t punish us right away. You commit a sin, and it’s written in your book, but the book is closed. Hashem doesn’t look at the book for a long time. He gives you a chance to make teshuvah. Here, suddenly, there was no chance. Outcome.
He says there are five main reasons. What are the five main reasons Hashem did not have patience there? Number one, at first they were very great. When a very great, important person sins, Hashem does not want to forgive him because it’s really unnatural. You’re so great; why are you sinning? Since it’s such a natural thing, Hashem doesn’t have patience and wait for him to make. You can’t compare a very great person to a normal, average person when he sins. Second, he comes from a great environment. All the people he comes from are great people, so bearing off the sin is also very unnatural. That’s another reason the sin is much more severe than normal. Thirdly, when Hashem does something to awaken you—not to sin, but to make teshuvah.
He gives a few stories like this. There was once a certain man who committed a sin and went with a prostitute. While he was with her, she suddenly slapped him in the face and woke him up. It was an unnatural thing, and he made sure she was back. He says they had unbelievable help from God. For 40 days and 40 nights, they were spying out the land and were totally unnoticed. It was a miracle. That in itself should have alerted them that they were getting special help from God. That should have awakened them to become better, stay on the right path, and make teshuvah. They didn’t heed it. The other two things are also very similar to this.
The idea is that when you’re at a higher level, especially if Hashem goes out of His way to alert you, we have to know—bringing this class home—that when we hear reports that missiles are being sent, it’s Hashem sounding trumpets. Hashem is alerting us. He’s telling us, “I need teshuvah from you. I want you to make teshuvah. I may have many other reasons why I’m bringing missiles, but one of the reasons is to wake us up. I’m not saying it’s the only reason. Hashem has many, multilayered reasons why He does what He does, but one of those reasons is to alert us to make teshuvah.” If we don’t make teshuvah now, then, God forbid, the time when God normally has patience and doesn’t punish us quickly could be taken away. Normally, we have sins written in the book, but we have time to clean up our acts as we get older, become more serious, and start to do teshuvah. We can erase all the sins and never be punished. But if God alerts us to do something and we don’t pick up that alert, if God is sounding the trumpets, sending missiles at our people, and every day a certain percentage of those missiles are not stopped by the golden dome, Iron Dome, or the slingshots they have—there are three or four different things that protect us from all these missiles—and missiles are getting through, hitting buildings, destroying things, and putting people in hospitals, this has to be a wake-up call for us. If we don’t do it now, if we don’t make teshuvah now, it’s like we’re being despised. We’re being alerted. We see Hashem trying to wake us up, but we’re not following suit. We’re not taking the hints. We’re not hearing the trumpets.
From all this, we have to feel that there’s a tremendous obligation on us now, that we’re here safe and sound in America. That’s not a reason not to feel happy for our brothers. Everyone has relatives there. Everyone has people they know there. There were schools from out there that still suck there. Girls from out there that suck there. They can’t get out. Could you imagine how fearful they may be at night when these sirens go off and you hear the explosions? My grandson—my son told me this morning that he’s in Jerusalem. He heard his whole—one of the things hit, and his whole building shook. When the whole building shakes, you suddenly realize this is real. This is not a sketch; this is real. This is called fire. This is not somewhere out in a field, not close to where we live. It’s right where we live. It’s right where all the people live. That’s where they’re landing. These are places where people live. Tel Aviv, Bnei Brak, and other places. Not a joke. People live there. We have to feel how Hashem is talking to us directly. He’s sounding the trumpet. He wants us to make teshuvah. We all have to think: it’s a serious thing. Let me go home today and think about what I can do better in my life. What’s one thing I always wanted to do but haven’t done yet? Either take on something I’ve never done before or stop something I’m doing that I know I shouldn’t be doing. We all have things. Every one of us. We need a little bit of thinking.
By the way, when you start to think, this is actually right: the minute you start to think about your life, you’ll immediately have feelings of wanting to make a change. That’s the power of your mind. The power of your mind is great. The minute you start to think about your life and what you can do, you’ll be filled with all types of feelings: “Yes, I want to do this.” Don’t do too much, like I said. Be smart. This is the first time to be very smart in your actual life. Don’t take too much on, but take something off, something new, something you haven’t done till now. Think it and say, “I’m doing this in the zechut that the Jewish people should be protected. I’m doing this so Hashem should awaken His mercy and rescue us from our enemies.” Do it for that reason. Then we can hope for salvation.
I have to tell you something. I remember the year was 1978. I talked to Sheen Lama Chet, which in Hebrew is called Tishlach. I had just opened the kolel in July, in the middle of July, July 18, 1978. Two weeks later, I got a call from Nassim. He started calling me every couple of weeks just to give me a little encouragement, you know, but he made it seem like he was my friend. At the time, I thought he was calling because he missed me and was lonely. That’s how good he was. He knew how to do it so that I thought I was helping him. Anyhow, he tells me something—I forget what was happening. Then he tells me, “Write down what I’m going to tell you now.” I wrote down, “Look at the Alfred Shimony.” The Alfred Shimony is a certain book from the time of the Gemara, and he tells you where to look. I wrote it all down exactly. What does the Alfred Shimony say?
The year Mashiach is going to come, all the nations of the world will be fighting one another. There will be all types of wars going on. Melech Paras, the king of Persia, the Persians of Iran, is going to go against Saudi Arabia, which they’re saying today is Saudi Arabia; they’re going against them. Saudi Arabia is going to take advice from Edom. Who’s Edom? The United States. Then Paras is suddenly going to threaten the entire world. Everyone’s going to be shaking and quivering. They’re going to be fearful and shaking, and they’re going to cry out to God, “Where shall we go? There’s no place to go. Where should we go? Where are we going? We can’t go anywhere. We’re stuck here, and the missiles are coming. Where should we go?” Hashem is going to answer us. He’s going to say to us, “My children, don’t be afraid. Everything I did, I’m doing it for you. It’s reached the year of your salvation. Reached the year of your salvation.” This is the year Mashiach is going to come. And the Midrash (rabbinic interpretation) told me—he told me then, in 1978, 47 years ago—that there was something going on in Iran, and I forget what it was then. But he said the Midrash is talking about that. When Mashiach comes, Iran is going to be a very prominent player in the scene, and he’s going to frighten us.
Well, he’s starting to frighten us. In fact, I heard an interview with one of the generals we’re interviewing. He said, “Israel’s like kids compared to where we are in war. We didn’t even start. We’re just playing with it. We didn’t even start to respond.” He’s bragging about it. Who knows what the truth is, but when he sends the missiles over and they’re hitting, and our Iron Dome is not working, and 10-15% of the missiles are getting through, each time they get through, a whole building suddenly turns to rubble. I don’t know if you saw the pictures, but the buildings destroyed in Tel Aviv are rubble. It’s like back when we had the Twin Towers. Rubble. That’s all you see. You realize, whoa, this is not simple. And God’s image should be under the rubble. They’re uncovering people under the rubble. They’re still finding people constantly. It has to be a trumpet sound to us. We have to move up. We see from this principle that if we don’t take a special warning and alert from God—God is alerting us to make the issue right—we don’t need to work God for this. We should make things worse, God. We should all be zocheh. Today, go home and commit to one small thing you want to do. One small thing. Then pray. Every day, in your prayers, just say one pasuk of Tehillim: “Ana Hashem, hoshi’a na.” Please, Hashem, rescue them. “Ana Hashem, hoshi’a na.” Please, Hashem, rescue them. Just say that pasuk. You don’t have to do a lot. But every day when you pray, make sure you have one pasuk for the people of Eretz Yisrael. And when you pray for the people of Eretz Yisrael, you have to pray for yourself too, because all the Jews are connected.
Things can happen here in a second. There’s so much antisemitism here now. Someone sent me something on YouTube that said some lady, a very American lady, was talking about how great the Palestinians are and how the evil empire that committed all these atrocities against them for the last two years is going to be wiped out. Wow, that’s what people are hearing, and all those types of antisemitic things.
I’ll never forget one time many, many years ago, maybe 50 years ago, I was driving around by Rosalind in the car. He was a survivor of the Holocaust, and I said, “It should never happen in America.” He answered me, “In America? Everything is set to blow up. Everything is all set to blow up. All you need is a match.” What is a match? In Europe, it was much more civilized; there wasn’t any antisemitism in Europe prior to the Holocaust. You look at that story in Dreyfus; we got along perfectly. Suddenly they came out against us. They started writing articles about us, saying that secretly we wanted to kill Christian children and take their blood and put it in the matzah. Lies, but they wrote about it with sources, as if it says somewhere in the Gemara that it doesn’t. But they used to quote things like that.
There’s a Gemara, for example, that says that when you bring a korban (offering), you have to be a Kohen, and if you’re a zar, a non-Kohen, you can’t do any of the things with the korban except one: you can slaughter the animal. You don’t have to be a Kohen to slaughter the animal. But after you slaughter the animal, they take the blood, walk to the altar, and sprinkle the blood. All those things have to be done by a Kohen. But the first thing of slaughtering, out of a Kibidzal, so it’s called in the Gemara, “Shechita keshera b’zar.” Slaughtering is kosher with a zar, and then a Kohen. You know how they interpreted it in the article against the Jews? “Shechita keshera.” It’s a mitzvah to slaughter a zar, a non-Jew. So they’re calling it Gemara. They’re calling it Kohen. You don’t know people that great. You see a Kohen. “Shechita keshera,” which means slaughtering is kosher with a non-Kohen. They took it to mean, “Shechita keshera”—slaughtering is kosher; it’s a mitzvah to slaughter a non-Jew. And now, how do you think you feel when you leave your house and know that everyone has just read that paper, that article about the Jews, how they secretly killed children, Christian children, to take this lot of beautiful boxes, and as the mitzvahs were slaughtering Jews sort of going in. How do you think you feel when you walk outside? Everyone’s looking at you like you’re—It’s very hard. A little while ago, they made laws against the Jews until the whole world was against the Jews. That’s very—everything is ready to blow. Everything is set here. It will all blow very quickly, God. And we pray. Have in mind, of course, first and foremost, those living in Israel, but also all Jews, wherever they’re living.
Okay, who has any questions? Yes, Paulette.
“What? To combat antisemitism, what should we do? What do we do to combat antisemitism?” Make teshuvah. Make teshuvah. We have to realize that all of us are controlled by God. Not the Hitlers, not the Iranians, not Khomeini, not his guys. They’re just tools in the hand of Hashem. It’s a pasuk that Ashur, the Assyrians who attacked the Jewish people, are considered a shevet, a rod in the hand of God. Hitler is a rod in the hand of God. It’s the way Hashem is alerting us. You may have a bigger question: why is Hashem so tough? Good question. But even though it’s a good question, you still have to—don’t deny the principle. Everything is controlled by Hashem, and therefore the first thing we do when bad things are happening to us is teshuvah and prayer. We take on something to change for the better, and we pray to God, “Please, Hashem, have mercy.” That’s what we do. Not just learn Qarali never again. We’re going to learn Qarali. We’re not going to beat anyone up.
You know, I got very upset about what was in all the Jewish papers the first couple of days when we attacked Iran. They were bragging: “Oh, we were so smart. We deceived them, we snuck in a whole—we had a whole factory of drones that we were making in Iran. We were making it there; we had a whole place where we did that. And then we had Trump working with us, and he made it clear that he was angry at us, and he talked to us when he came and dealt with all the Arabs. All this was part of the plan, so they wouldn’t know that we were going to—” First of all, what are you telling people about? If you did that, why are you bragging about it? Maybe you still want to do it. Why talk about it? Why do you have to tell all these things? You’re bragging as if it’s my power, my strength. Look how brilliant we are. How brilliant? What happened on October 7th? Where was that brilliance? What happened on October 7th? What happened to all our brilliance? We were like children. We couldn’t do anything. They came in for hours upon hours upon hours. There was no army, no police, nothing for hours and hours. So what happened to our brilliance?
The answer is that when Hashem wants to help us, we’re brilliant. When Hashem doesn’t want to help us, we’re really big kids. That’s what happened. That’s the truth. We saw it clearly. So now we’re brilliant again. Forget about our brilliance. It’s God helping us. All we should do is weeping and thank you, Hashem. Thank you, Hashem, for all the miracles You’re doing every day. Unbelievable miracles. Even though they’re getting through, relatively speaking, very few people have been killed. 24 is a big number, but still, relatively speaking, what could have happened? Buildings are turning into rubble, and yet only one person was killed in each building—one, two, three people dead. It’s dangerous, yes, but we have to recognize Hashem. Stop worrying about how smart we are, how we deceived them, and how we fooled them. The minute we start bragging, it’s another way of saying that my strength and greatness are doing everything. It’s really on me and the brilliance of the army. You know, it’s not the brilliance of anything. Hashem is helping us and guiding us and giving us the ideas. What do you think, Yair? What’s the idea? Hashem. It’s all Hashem. You have to remember that. We have to thank Hashem for that. Praise Hashem. Do more. Protect us totally. End the war, end it. Make this deal with Trump ready. End the whole thing.
I believe it’s going to end soon. But if it doesn’t, we really have to make this Shabbat. If it doesn’t, we have to really start praying. But we should start praying right now, and start making this Shabbat right now. That’s the only thing we should be doing. Nothing else. We have to become—you know, when we had the “never again” philosophy, the idea was that we were going to learn how to fight. We were going to learn how to fight. We were going to learn karate. You know what I mean? We were going to train ourselves in karate and never again. It’s Hashem helping us. It’s Hashem’s help. When you see what’s going on and Hashem is so little, how do you not see it as an open miracle? It is open miracles, but you have to believe it. You have to believe it. Most people see it and say it’s our power, that’s how brilliant we are. “We’re brilliant. That’s our great air force. Look at how the air force is flying low, and unbelievably, look what they’re doing.” Keep bragging about your power and your greatness, and then I said, “We’re going to take it away.” And He took it away. October 7th—we forgot how stupid we looked, how feeble we looked.
And by the way, there’s no explanation. To this day, nobody has given an answer. Where were we? Nobody. No one has a real answer. The only answers you hear are not good answers. Money was passed. We were bribed. People were paid off. We’re hearing all kinds of terrible things coming at us, which make us look really bad if that was what happened, God forbid. But whatever it was, we didn’t look good. We weren’t smart. What happened to all our technology and everything? It was nothing. The whole day, the whole day, we had nothing. So we have to remember that. You’re right, we should see the miracles now. We should realize these are miracles upon miracles. We should be thanking Hashem every day for these unbelievable miracles. So now we’re starting to see that the miracles are not working as much. Why? Because we’re not praying as much. We’re not recognizing them as much. It’s making things a little bit tougher for us. So we should get a little scared. The miracles were so great that we forgot to be scared. People in Jerusalem living there were not scared at all. All the yeshiva boys were on the roof to see the fireworks. They see the fireworks. Why? Because it never happened. That’s why. You get used to it after a while. I mean, you’re saved after a while. There’s no danger.
We were at Lyon High School, at the grave of Hacham Ovadia Yosef, and all the girls were assembled around the grave. I was talking to them, and Mrs. Diamond came over to me and said, “Cyrus, we’ve got to go to the safe room.” “Huh? I’m talking now.” “No, we’ve got to go.” “Okay, let’s go.” There was no room in the safe room, so we went against the wall. Looking up, suddenly we saw—this lid and the smoke came out—and suddenly I got scared for the first time. I said, “Wow, it’s right here. Right here.” You think it’s way away, far away, right over our heads. It happened then. Unless they would have landed now—it happened right then. But you get so used to it that I wasn’t scared at all. Why? Because of my Emunah (faith)? No. Because nothing ever happened. It’s Iron Dome. You get used to it. It’s like you drive a car. Do you think that you can iron a car? You don’t think about it. You drive a car every day. Usually nothing ever happens. But now things are happening. 10-15% are getting through. Hashem is changing things a little bit. He’s raising the tension. You took it too much for granted. You took it for granted that I’m helping you, and you didn’t talk about it. You talked about the Iron Dome. You didn’t talk about Hashem. “Oh, you talked about the Iron Dome and Hashem? Let me show you the Iron Dome is not so infallible as you think it is. Let me show you. You know, 15% of them will get through.” Now what? Now you have to talk to God. Now you have to talk directly to God. And the way you talk to God is—yes.
“To feel what they don’t do a little bit. I know a family, she has a few kids. And what about all those ladies whose husbands are in the army, and they’re all alone, handling all their kids, and they don’t have a man in the house with them, and now the fireworks are going off and the sirens are going off? They’ve got to be alone. It’s tremendous—we don’t realize. Do you know how many people have no homes now? How many people are ready—thousands of people are ready, have no homes, thousands. We don’t realize the buildings were destroyed. Okay, no one was in the building, but it’s a time—but these are their homes. They’re away or this and that. Miracles are happening, but now they have no place to live. We don’t realize what they’re going through there. We have to think about it and realize that we really have to come closer to Torah.”
They’re trying now—there’s a whole bunch of gedolim who were supposed to come from Israel to America to raise money for all the yeshivot in Israel because the yeshivot are having a very hard time. The government stopped giving them money because they’re not doing what the government wants, and so on. They called me up to speak for them. I said, “Of course I’ll speak for them.” They said, “But we have to tell the people it’s the right time to collect money for the yeshivot.” I said, “It’s the only thing to be doing. The only thing we should be doing now is supporting Torah. We realize that the lack of Torah is what brings these things to happen. The missiles are coming because there’s no Torah in the world, or Torah is being threatened in the world. We have to support Torah, show the people we’re supporting Torah, and raise money for Torah, and that will be after Shabbat to Hashem without a question. We have to show the people that we have to support Torah more than at any other time now.”