Yesterday, a fellow came here and told me, “Rabbi, I just made a business deal. I have three partners in my business, and Be'ezrat Hashem (with Hashem's help), it's going to go big.” I said, “Oh, very nice. What happened? What did you do?” He told me, “I had to connect—I had one connection with this, with that, with that.” He told me, “I brought all my other partners in.” I said, “Can I ask you something? Did you need the other two partners?” He said, “No, not at all, not at all. I found the deal, I found the guy, I found the business, I found every single thing he found.” I said, “So why are you bringing them in? Do you need them? Do you need them to invest money?” I mean, do you need them to invest money? He's like, “No, I don't need them to invest any money. I have all the money that I can invest, and I can make it between me and that guy, with nothing to do with my other partners.” I said, “So why are you bringing the other two partners in?” He's like, “Because I'm loyal.” You heard what he said? “Because I'm loyal.” I have a character trait in me that I'm always loyal. If he's my partner, he's my partner for life. That means whatever I'm going to do, I don't care, I'm bringing him in as a partner. Imagine, that's some loyalty. That's some loyalty.
Now, what does he have to do? Think about it for a second. Think right now about what just happened. Think about Moshe Rabbeinu. Imagine he comes down after getting the luchot (tablets) and asks, “What's going on?” What does he say? He says, “Oh, by the way, they saw that you were a day late—like a few hours late, a day late, whatever the exact number was—but you got delayed for a little bit.” Please listen, please listen. He says, “You got delayed a little bit.” And what does he say? He says, “What'd they do?” “They right away build an egel, they build a golden calf.” What would you do? What would you do? “I'm your leader. I'm your leader for so many years. I did this, I did that, I took you out of Egypt. All of a sudden, I'm not here for a few hours, and all of a sudden, you're ready to betray me and pick another leader? It hasn't even been a week. And now, all of a sudden, you're going to a new leader? You're going to find a new leader?” What would you do? What would you do? “Get out of here.”
And guess what happens? Hashem says, “Oh, by the way, I'm going to wipe them out.” What does Moshe Rabbeinu say? “If you wipe them out, guess what? I'm out too.” What do you mean, you're out too? You should be thrilled. You should say, “Yeah, these guys, forget about it. Two minutes later, they drop me like I'm a hot potato. Yeah, no problem. Let's do it. Let's make it happen. I'll do it.” But Moshe Rabbeinu doesn't do that. I have a question: Why not? Why not? Because loyalty has nothing to do—meaning to say, loyalty is a middah (character trait) that you have to have, that we have to have.
You know, I'll give you another example. Marriage is more about loyalty than love. Let me explain. Marriage is more about loyalty than love. You marry a guy. Let's say the girl marries a guy. All of a sudden, after five years, six years, ten years, the guy starts losing his hair. “Oh, Rabbi, I married this guy. He was so good-looking. All of a sudden, now he has a beer belly. He has that belly, you know, like that big belly. You know what I'm saying? Like the father belly. You know what I'm talking about?” Mikey, you know what I'm talking about? Do you have this one or not? You have one. All right? Kadesh doesn't have one yet. Soon he's going to have one. All right? So you have that beer-belly type of thing. That little belly. That little belly. That little belly, like every father. You know, when you hit that belly, you're a father of like a few kids, and you made it. You made it. Successful guy. You know, you made it. And then all of a sudden, you start losing your hair a little bit, and you start this. And then the wife says, ‘Rabbi, I married this guy. Forget about it. He was so good-looking. I'm going to show you the wedding picture. What happened to him ten years later? What happened?’ All right? All right?
See, it's not about love only. It's more about loyalty. Loyalty is through thick and thin. “He's my husband.” That's what she's supposed to be thinking. She's supposed to be thinking, “He's my husband. He's my husband. I love him to death. There's no guy in the world as great as my husband. He's my husband.” And it's the same thing with a husband toward his wife. The husband has to think, “There's no lady in the world that's prettier than my wife. That's it. She is it. She is the number one lady in my life. There's nobody else prettier. Nobody else has better character traits than my wife.” This is loyalty. This is loyalty. And this is what we learn from Moshe Rabbeinu. He was a man. He was a man. He was extremely loyal. This is a great lesson that we learn from this week's Parashat HaShavua.