Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Parsha Review Podcast.

Good morning, everybody. It's so wonderful to see you here this beautiful Tuesday morning here at the TORCH Center and those of you online, thank you for joining us. This week's Parsha is an incredible Parsha for us to study and to learn and to understand what amazing things transpired before the Jewish people, before us and our ancestors 3,300 years ago. The Jewish people were enslaved for 210 years in Egypt,
equivalent to 400 years of slavery. It was that harsh and that cruel. We had infanticide that we had experienced, where all the Jewish baby boys were thrown right into the Nile River, where you had the slavery, the bondage, wasn't only a pain of not being able to do what we wanted, but we weren't able to serve Hashem, which was the biggest challenge. And what else? And we learned, our sages teach us, that Moshe, that Pharaoh
understood the nature of mankind and he saw that the best thing for him to do is to distract the Jewish people, keep them so busy. Imagine if you had 210 years of free labor of millions and millions of workers, millions. At some point you have nothing else to build, all the buildings are built, all the streets are paved. What else are you gonna do? Well, what they did was they made the Jewish people build buildings in quicksand. That way it continued to need to build,
because eventually it would all sink in. And this was a crazy reality that the Jewish people were living through. God says to Moses, you're gonna be the leader to take the Jewish people out. You are going to be the person who's going to go speak to Pharaoh and you're going to get the Jewish people freed. And of course, we know the story of the last two Torah portions, Parshah's Ve'era and Parshah's Bo, where we have seven in Ve'era, seven plagues and then three plagues in Bo, that
God performed. Everyone saw this. There was no one who was limited from seeing and experiencing these plagues, except for the Jewish people. And in the process of these plagues, the Jewish people became immensely wealthy, because for every glass of water that the Egyptians wanted, they had to pay the Jew. And then it stayed water and didn't turn into blood. And each one of the plagues progressively got more and more fortuitous for the Jewish people, but more harsh for the Egyptians. And progressively,
the miracles were becoming more and more revealed to the Jewish people. Until we have, not the base hit, not the double, the triple, the home run, the Grand Slam. What's the Grand Slam of them all? The greatest miracle of them all is the splitting of the sea. Where Nachshon goes in. He takes the first step and says, I'm not going to wait for a miracle to happen. I'm just going to go in. Until the water, our sages say, reached his nostrils.
He was about to die. He was about to suffocate. And then the water split. And if we look at our prayer, if we look in the Torah, we have a very interesting terminology that is repeated in different ways. The first is, we say, And they passed in the sea, in the raging sea, on dry land. And they crossed in the midst of the sea on dry land. You have, go to the beach, go to Galveston, go wherever you are. You see the raging waters. You see those, the power,
the might of Hashem, in what? In just a few waves. Knocks you right over. Raging sea. They walk through, not only they walk through, they walk through on dry land. And then what does it say at the end of Az Yashir? It says, They went on dry land in the middle of the raging sea. What's the difference between the two terminologies? Well, once it's, they were going in the raging sea on dry land, and once they're going dry land in the raging sea.
What, what, what's, what we know as scholars of the Torah, that we are, we study the parasha every week, that it's not, there's no random here. So why in the world do we have these different terminologies? Again, I'm gonna read, read it to you again. You split the sea before them, and they crossed in the midst of the sea on dry land. The second time it says, into the sea, Hashem, the children of Israel walked on dry land amid the sea.
Once amid the, amid the raging sea on dry land, and on dry land amid the raging sea. What, what's really happening here? I heard a beautiful idea. From Rabbi Wolgelernter, senior in Jerusalem. He says, most magnificent idea. He says that the difference is as follows. The world is raging out there. The world is raging. There's craziness going on. We have the sea of things that are going on, and then there's an open miracle. There's an open miracle, and suddenly we're on dry land.
But sometimes, we, if we don't recognize, it means if we take the time to recognize and see that amidst all the craziness, here is a magnificent open miracle, where it doesn't really make sense. It doesn't make sense that the seabed be dry. You know, you stand on the beach, even if the water didn't, even if the tide didn't reach your feet, you sink into the sand. No, no, they didn't. Chariots, the strollers, the men, the women, the high heels, nothing got stuck. It was dry land.
They left Egypt on dry land. That's a miracle. It's an open miracle. When you are able to point your finger at an open miracle and not let it become routine, you point it out, you recognize the incredibleness of this miracle, then you know what happens. When you're walking on dry land, and you realize that every single day we have miracles, notwithstanding the raging sea that in the world we're living in. That means if you, we learn
to recognize the miracles within the raging sea, we'll learn to recognize the miracles when we're on dry land, when it's ordinary. Do you know the miracle of your body? The miracle we have in our bodies, every single minute of every single day, how our heart pumps, how our lungs expand, and then contract, take in oxygen, out oxygen, how the diaphragm works so perfectly, how our reproductive system works, how our skin heals, you have a beautiful car. Imagine, God forbid, it got a scratch.
Got a scratch, someone opened the door, dented your car. Imagine, right, you come out the next day, you're like a little disappointed, you come out the next day and the scratch is gone. That's our skin. We get a scratch, a couple days later, it's gone. It healed itself. It'd be the most miraculous car ever if it just healed itself. There's no such thing. But our body does operate like that. We have millions and millions of miracles that we experience every day, yet,
they can be completely hidden from us. Because when we have open miracles, we don't notice them. You know, the amazing thing that we say on Hanukkah, on Hanukkah, what do we say? Why do we light the candles eight days of Hanukkah for eight days? Because the oil that was only there for one day lasted for eight days. What's the obvious question? The miracle was actually seven days, not eight days. Because they had enough for one day.
So why do you make a celebration for eight days? Make a celebration for seven days. Sages tell us because the one day is also a miracle. You have to recognize that it's not ordinary. It's not, it's not just a simple thing that oil burns. It's not a simple thing that our bodies function. That this magnificent world operates the way it does. That the galaxies, that exact, the exact positioning of the earth is perfect distance
from the sun, from the moon, so that we don't freeze to death, so we don't burn to a crisp. We're exactly where we need to be. It's the most marvelous miracles. But the moment that we lose our amazement, our awe for the miracles that are open in front of our eyes. We mentioned so many times recently about the miracles that we've seen in the land of Israel. They're unbelievable miracles. We have hundreds of ballistic missiles. We have a seven-front war
between Hezbollah and Hamas and Iran and Iraq and and Syria and Jordan and Egypt and Yemen. From all sides it's coming. And we see minimal damage to property alone, if any. Recently, we saw this. That's our modern-day splitting of the sea. And if we don't stop and say, wow, this is a miracle. And appreciate and thank God for it. Then the ordinary miracles, we're just gonna brush right over them. We're not gonna notice the greatness of the miracles that we are experiencing every single day.
This is such an amazing idea. We have a raging world around us and yet we're living miracles every day. This, you know, what's the problem? What's really going on? You remember, I remember, I'm old enough to remember the fax machine. My children don't even know what that is. No idea what a fax machine is. But I remember 1985-84 my father came home with this new machine. This is the most amazing thing. We're gonna call Saba, my grandfather, in Israel.
He had, my father got a machine for him as well. And we're gonna be able to write him a note. We're gonna be able to put it in, dial his number, and he gets the note over there. It was like, wow, this is amazing. The technology, this was, and you had that roll, that that special paper that you needed. It was, it would, the peak of technology, the awe. I remember when the America Online, everybody remembers America Online? AOL?
I remember when AOL, they used to send you CDs to your house every single day. You'd get another CD, install for free, three months, da-da-da, the whole thing. I remember when my father and I did the first instant message, messaging between, between each other. It was like, I cannot believe it. I write you a little note here and you get it on your, your computer a thousand miles away.
I was in Yeshiva and I had a computer. I was working on some projects. My father bought me this little laptop and we, we did instant messaging. It was the most remarkable thing. And then, we have cell phones. I remember when I came to Yeshiva in, in Lakewood, New Jersey, it was right when the, the Nokia phones, the little Nokia phones came out. It was the first time I owned the phone. I, I don't want to say a smartphone.
It wasn't a smartphone. It was dumber than most of the phones today, but it was, you're able to send a text message and play Snake. You know, two, two things, two features that it had, and make phone calls, of course, if you were in a place that had good reception. I remember the first time I called my father from a cell phone. It was like, this is unbelievable.
I remember my father bought a car phone, you know, with the curly, with the curly antenna. And again, we, young people who are watching or listening to this will be like, I have no idea what they're talking about. We always had iPhone, right? Well, two, till 2007, we didn't. We had the Palm phone. We had other phones, but this was, this was, is unbelievable technology. And today that you can video call that you, we can broadcast right here from the Torch Center across the globe,
across the globe. Whoever's watching, you can write exactly where you're coming, where you're watching from. It's unbelievable. It's an amazing thing. But we're no longer living in amazement because it's ordinary. It just is. You know, I'm sure there's nobody who looks at Elon Musk's spaceship that he flew into space and then landed back at the dock in, in, in Texas, in Starbase, Texas. The first time we're like, oh my goodness, that's unbelievable. But how long does that amazement last for? How much does that awe stand for?
Does it last us or does it fade quicker than we realize the miracle that's in our body every single day? The most marvelous creature that was ever created is mankind. God gives us a mind that can process challenging ideas, riddles, difficult dilemmas that we can solve. A physical body that has blood pumping, that has blood pumping through our veins, the whole system of how the
oxygen goes into our blood, it gets distributed to all of our extremities. I mean, the miracles are just unbelievable and yet it's so easy for us to forget. This is the power of recognizing a miracle and not letting it fade away. You know, there is a special mitzvah that when someone experiences a miracle, they recite a blessing. Recite a blessing. If someone was in a desert, in a life-threatening situation, and, and got out of that,
someone was, God forbid, in an accident, there's a special blessing you need to recite, thanking Hashem for saving your life. HaGom El Chayob Im Tovos Shegmolani Kol Tov. Hashem gives us unbelievable miracles and those who were ill and got healed, those who were sick, someone was hospitalized, came out, you have to make a great party to glorify the name of Hashem and to publicize the miracle so that we don't forget. We don't forget the incredible gift that Hashem has bestowed upon us.
Because the minute we stop acknowledging, the minute we stop, we live in a life that lacks, that lacks richness. What is a miracle? A miracle is Hashem telling you, I love you. That's what a miracle is. It's a way for Hashem to say, I am crazy about you. Look, I went out of my way to save your life. And we just like, well, things happen, so, I was lucky, so just move on. No! Hashem, I love you, too! And not just, it happened. I was lucky.
Not let it become routine. Not let it just be, oh, I was going in the raging sea, and it was dry land. I was in the raging sea, and there was dry land there. Such an amazing miracle. So that when we have an ordinary day of dry land, we realize that actually we're in a raging sea. And we can see things with clarity. This is such, such a profound idea. That the more we stop, and we recognize the miracles that we experience on a daily basis,
the more enriched we become. You know, we're saying in the Haggadah, The more you talk about the exodus from Egypt, which was filled with plenty of miracles, open miracles. It's an easy target. Look in the portion, this week's Torah portion, and go through Parashat Pesach, and you're like, in awe. These are miracles that we experienced in front of our eyes. Never forget it. Never forget it. But the more you talk about it, the more you extrapolate every single detail of exactly how this transpired. Imagine yourself walking through
this raging sea on dry land. Imagine that. You have the Egyptians right behind you. You got the water right in front of you. What am I going to do? And you just walk right in, and everything opens up for you. Imagine that. It says, The more you talk about the exodus from Egypt and its miracles, I raise a Meshubuch, the more you become blessed. Why do you become blessed? Because you realize how much Hashem loves you. So now you're happier. You're content. You're filled with energy.
Because you're like, everything's a miracle. Hashem just keeps on giving me. Hashem just keeps on showering me with great miracles. He loves me. So you feel enriched. The more you talk about it, the better you become. Why? Because you realize how fortunate you are. And this is why we have, and the Talmud tells us, that King David instructed us, and we see this sourced in, What does Hashem ask of you?
I say to say, don't read it ma, but rather mea. That we should say a hundred blessings every single day. Remember how blessed you are. Every single day, reaffirm Affirm, I recognize a hundred times a day how blessed I am. That's why we have a hundred blessings every day that we recite. 18, 19 in the Amidah. We have about 25 in the morning blessings. And throughout the day we eat, we drink. Each one we recite a blessing before, recite a blessing after.
The idea is not that we say words. The idea is that we feel a connection. We recognize and we notice the miracles. Pokeh Eivrim is a blessing we recite in the morning. We learned this in our prayer podcast. Pokeh Eivrim, Hashem opens our eyes because we're blind. You ever think about how an eye sees? What does it see? How does it record what it sees? Here you see a red chair, a gray chair, a white table. The eye records everything.
It's it's the most marvelous gift. Today, it's hard for us to realize that because what do you mean every phone has a camera? It's a little bit more of a sophisticated camera. It's called an eye. No. It's the most remarkable miracle. By the way, the cameras are also remarkable miracles. When we hold the smartphone, we should realize. We shouldn't be distracted by it. We should be in awe by it. The amazing technology that Hashem gifted the world with.
There haven't hasn't been a single invention in the last five thousand seven hundred and eighty six years. You know that? Not a single invention. We didn't invent anything. We only discovered. It's always been there. I think the radio wave suddenly in year 2000, now we know that there's waves. No, it was always there. Hashem revealed it to us now. It's an amazing thing that the Chavitz Haim's granddaughter once asked him his opinion on technology. Again, Chavitz Haim passed away in 1934.
What did they have? A locomotive? I just saw it yesterday. Someone sent me a video. Wow. A video of the Alta Shtetl back in the early 1900s. Back in Krakow. You see the Jewish Shtetl? See the marketplace. You see the great Sadiq and the righteous people leaving synagogue, walking to synagogue, building their sukkah. You see little children. You see mothers walking with their kids. It's an unbelievable. It takes you into a hundred years ago.
Hundred years ago how the Jewish community was thriving in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, in Hungary, in Ukraine, in Russia. Unbelievable. Just to get a glimpse into that. Amazing miracles. It's really sad because it was all destroyed. But the Chavitz Haim's granddaughter says, and you can see in some of the things, you see trolleys, you see some cars driving, not many, all of those old looking cars with the beautiful ornate details. Really, really amazing. That was high technology.
So the granddaughter of the Chavitz Haim said, what can we learn from this? Chavitz Haim said, we haven't begun to see the technology. And he said, technology's purpose is to tell us that Hashem is around everywhere. Hashem sees everything. You think the computer, the phone, the camera, that can see but Hashem can't see. It can hear, it can record. Here we have a microphone. The microphone records every sound. But Hashem can't hear what we say. We spoke yesterday in our Jewish Inspiration podcast. We talked about
slander, the devastating effect of speaking negatively about another person. Hashem doesn't hear what we say. The microphone can but God can't. This recorder records everything. The camera sees everything. And God, even more than that, we have the truth detector. It can tell you if you're lying or saying the truth. Oh, but Hashem can't. Hashem can't know if you're saying the truth or not. Yodea Mach Shavos Bnei Adam. Hashem knows our thoughts.
Hashem knows our attention. Even if we're doing something bad, but Hashem knows what our intention is. Whether it's doing bad, intending to do good. We're doing good, intending to do bad. Hashem knows the thoughts. Hashem knows the intention. All of technology is one way for us to have imuna. But we have to open our eyes and we can't close our eyes and be busy, so busy with technology, so busy with our toys, with our games, with our gadgets, with our things.
We're talking before we went live, we were talking about computers. Now we're talking about challenging things that we may experience with our printers. You know what a miracle it is that you can print something out and have it like that sitting on your desk waiting for you? You know what you had to do a hundred years ago to get something printed? Today, from your phone, you can do this. It's absolutely remarkable. I just recently saw a person who's been paralyzed, can't move his hands,
can't move his feet, his legs, totally, totally paralyzed. They connected Neuralink to his brain. And he can do everything we can do. His brain controls a mouse on the computer. It's absolutely remarkable the miracles that we have. The miracles that every single day we live in those miracles. In those miracles. Notwithstanding that there's a raging sea outside, we can feel the dry land in that raging sea. All we have to do is open our eyes and live with amazement.
We have to have awe, recognize the incredible world that Hashem has given us, the great gifts that He has bestowed upon us. And God willing, we'll study this parasha. Peshalach. By the way, there's an age-old custom to read the portion of the man. We see the man that was given to the Jewish people. Just like, let's just stop a second. Because the Jewish people are sitting in the desert and they're wondering how they're gonna eat. There's no delivery. There's no, you don't have Walmart Plus delivery.
HEB delivery. You don't, you don't have that Uber Eats in the desert. How they gonna eat? God says, it's okay. I got you covered. You're gonna have manna descend from heaven. Do we realize what this is? Oh, yeah, the manna, of course. What an incredible miracle this is. Their sustenance came from heaven. You know our say to say. We have manna today too! Your livelihood, does that make sense? Does it make sense that we earn a livelihood? No, it doesn't make sense either.
We think it makes sense. Yeah, I went to college and I got a degree and then I got a job. It's like, no, these are all miracles too. We have to recognize that they're miracles. We have to see the miracles that we are experiencing every single day. It's no less a miracle that you get a job in men's warehouse. It's a miracle and earn a livelihood. It's no less of a miracle than the manna coming down from heaven. It is manna coming down from heaven.
Our sages say that if we read the portion of the manna today, it has unbelievable powers to bring about success in livelihood, success in Parnassah. Success in livelihood, success in Parnassah. The great great gifts that Hashem has given us in our world today. For us to be able to realize how blessed we are, how gifted we are. Hashem should bless us all to have an amazing Shabbos. Thank you so much. When I was becoming an EMT, now almost six years ago,
I went through the course and we're learning through about how the heart sends the blood into the lungs and the lungs sends the blood all the way into the alveoli and then there's an exchange of the carbon dioxide and the oxygen. So the air that we breathe in goes into our lungs and the breathe that we exhale is that carbon dioxide. How does that exchange happen? Where the carbon dioxide goes out of the blood and the oxygen goes into the blood.
How does that happen? That exchange and the guy reading the the narration of the book in the course that I was taking says we have no idea how this happens, but it does and it's happened for millions of years. They have to add that, right? You have such an opportunity to bring Hashem awareness into people's lives and they have to throw in the millions of years that's obviously not not founded. It's an amazing thing. I have no idea. I started crying when I heard this.
We're a living miracle. Every single day we're a living miracle. It's the most remarkable thing in the world. To have the gift of life and then we say, oh someone died. What happened? What happened? How do they live? That's what happened. Life is a miracle. Not death like oh, it must be something with it must be maybe it was their diet. Maybe it was they they were over it with a healthy. They weren't healthy. Life is a miracle. That we're able to live is the miracle. It's unbelievable.

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