Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

00:03 - Intro (Announcement)
You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.

00:12 - Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe (Host)
All right, welcome back everybody. Welcome back. It is so wonderful to see everyone. It's so wonderful to be back here after Yom Kippur. You know, yom Kippur is such an incredibly holy day. It's called Yom HaKadosh. We have already an episode about this, talking about Yom Kippur being called the. Yom HaKadosh means the holy day. Why is it called the holy day? Because it's the day that Hashem desires us to come closer to Him and us getting close to Hashem is so holy, it is so special. Hashem loves when we come back to Him and it's funny that, if you look and not funny, it's amazing that if you look at the prayer we're asking Hashem time and again please forgive us, please forgive us for the things.

00:52
Now, something that really stood out to me this year is that when we say avinu malkenu not we say avinu malkenu when we say alcheit, the first al-kheit that we say is be'ones u'beratzon, which to me is like such an incredible dichotomy, because ones means by mistake, beratzon means by desire. So which one is it? What are we saying? Al-kheit for the sins that we did with desire, meaning we wanted to do those sins, and then be'ones are the things that we did by mistake. And why are they combined together. They should be two separate ones, but our sages, in their incredible genius, combined those two to teach us an amazing lesson Is that when you desire to do something wrong, it really is by mistake. It really is. You really don't desire, it's right now. You're overcome, you're overwhelmed with temptation.

01:46
So if you look at the incredible prayer of Tefillah Zaka, right at the beginning of Yom Kippur, there's a special prayer. Even before Kol Nidre, there's a special prayer that we recite. You can read it in English in the Arts Girl, they have a magnificent prayer that our sages composed for us, and that prayer goes as follows it's a very long prayer, but it's such a beautiful prayer. It's almost impossible to read this prayer without crying, because what he says is Hashem, you created us, you gave us hands, you gave us legs, you gave us a mind, you gave us eyes, you gave us a mouth, you gave us ears, you gave us all of our functioning body, but you also gave us a mind. You gave us eyes, you gave us a mouth, you gave us ears, you gave us all of our functioning body, but you also gave us. You also gave us a Yetzirah. And what can we do? That Yetzirah caused us to do things that we really didn't want to do, that Yetzirah brought us to a place that we kind of shouldn't be at. So, hashem, please forgive us, and that's the gist of it.

02:45
But what he says an amazing thing in part of the prayer he says we really deeply, deeply within our consciousness, we never, ever wanted to do that, we never wanted to. But we have these two paradoxical powers that are fighting for our attention Our physical, the lower one, and our spiritual, the higher one, and they're constantly in a struggle and sometimes we lost out to it. So when we say we say alchei t'shechatanu for the sin that we have sinned, with desire, with intention be'ones by mistake, u'berotzen, but with intention. Be'ones by mistake, u'berotzen, but with desire Our sages tell us, really, what's going on here is that we didn't want to sin, we didn't want to fall to our Yetzhara, but we did by mistake. So therefore they're combined. You know our sages of blessed memory, but we did by mistake, so therefore they're combined. You know our sages of blessed memory, at the end of Yom Kippur would dance and dance and dance. Why? Because their sins were forgiven.

03:57
How do we know if our sins are forgiven? How do we know? How do we know if God said, okay, you know what David Forgiven? How do we know? How do we know if God said, okay, you know what David Forgiven? How do we know? Maybe not. Maybe Hashem decided that he's not going to forego us. Or our sages tell us Vayomer Hashem salachti kidvarecha, I forgive you because you asked. I forgive you because you requested. You requested to be forgiven. I forgive, it's enough. It's not like that friend that you ask for forgiveness like, oh, now you're coming to ask forgiveness and they have all of these preconditions to forgiving us. No, when it comes to the Almighty, if you just come and ask you already, you already are forgiven and that's the gift of Yom Kippur.

04:48
Yom Kippur is such a powerful time. It's such a time. And then we come the days after Yom Kippur. By the way, these really, today already, should be the holiday of Sukkot. Our sages tell us there are these few days for a week, like this, where we have Yom Kippur on Thursday and then we have Fridays. We have to get ready for Shabbos, then we have Sunday. That's the only time we really can get prepared for Sukkot.

05:14
But really, sukkot should come right at the heels of Yom Kippur, why? Because Sukkot. Really it's like they call the middle part of the United States. Some people, arrogantly from Washington, call it flyover country. It's like only the coasts count and everything in the middle is flyover country. That's what they call it derogatorily they call it flyover country. But the truth is many people I remember there was one of the rabbis in our community wrote an article sadly, very, very sadly, in the Jewish Health Voice in Houston, here, our local Jewish paper, and he said that Sukkot is sort of the forgotten holiday, which is devastating because at first it's not true. Maybe in his congregation it is, but it's not flyover country. It's not like, oh, rosh Hashanah, yom Kippur, and then we just like Sukkot. It's just like an ancillary, it's just an extra add-on and it's not true.

06:16
Sukkot is the demonstration of, or the exemplification of, our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, rosh Hashanah. We say Hashem, give us a new year because we're going to change, but we have an accounting of the past and we'll clean that up before Yom Kippur. And we clean it up. Yom Kippur is about to pass. So now we're showing we're starting anew, we're starting a fresh start. What happens? We leave our homes, we start fresh. We bring unity together. We take all the four different species that exemplify the four different types of Jews. We bring them all together. We're showing unity.

06:56
The unity that was demonstrated on Sukkot is the unity that was never seen before, and throughout the year there was never a holiday that demonstrated unity like Sukkot. Not only that is that Sukkot demonstrated a unity not only within the Jewish people, but the Jewish people with the rest of the world, with all the other nations. Why? Because there were 70 offerings that were brought throughout the holiday of Sukkot for each of the 70 nations, for each of the 70 nations, so that the nations, if they sinned or sages, tell us it's because the Jewish people didn't do their job teaching the world. Our job is to teach the world what it means to be a servant of God. Our job as Jews is to show what it means to be ethical, what it means to be moral, what it means to be caring, what it means to be concerned for our fellow humanity. That's our job. And if we don't do our job right and they sin, we're held accountable. So we brought an offering for the nations of the world.

08:01
This is such a great responsibility that we have. We have to feel that awesome responsibility every single day. As Jewish people, we have to feel that sense of responsibility, of achrayus. We call it achrayut, taking responsibility for others. It's an amazing thing. That's why, you know, typically someone has a court case, they're terrified. I don't know what the jury is going to decide. But Jewish people, when we have court cases, we're happy. See Jewish people, they're smiling, they're going Yom Kippur. Yeah, we're wearing white clothes to show that we're clean of sin, that we're asking for atonement, we're asking for forgiveness. So clothes are white, but there's great joy. I'll tell you something really special.

08:52
In the middle of the night of Yom Kippur, my radio, my Hatzalah radio, gets a call. At 1 am I jump out of bed and I go, for I was out of the house for almost two hours. I had to take someone to the hospital, someone who was not well. So on Yom Kippur. But that's the mitzvah of Yom Kippur. So let me tell you what happened is that the call that came was for an individual and his wife was very concerned. So his wife said I'm going to go with him to the hospital in the ambulance.

09:32
I said, okay, but who's going to be with the kids? So she said you know, I'm going to try to knock on my neighbor's door. Maybe my neighbor can watch over the kids or something like that. But it's 1 o'clock in the morning, 1.30 in the morning, most people are not waiting by their door to hear a knock. So they tried, they knocked on the door, one neighbor, another neighbor nobody's answering their door, which is just to show the beauty of a community that you could knock on your neighbor's door to ask their friends with all their neighbors, and the neighbor would happily come over. I said you know what, never mind, I'll go to my house, I'll wake up my daughter and she'll come happily to be the babysitter my daughter's responsible, almost 18 years old. I will go and I will do that. You know she tried. The neighbors, neighbors, didn't answer. So I go home and my daughter, without even blinking an eye, she wakes up. She's like okay, no problem, like you know, she goes and she babysits the kids until 9.30 in the morning, 9.30, she brings the kids to one of their family friends that was going to watch the kids. And something that I told my daughter is like really incredible.

10:38
My grandfather, when he was in Yeshiva in Poland in the Mir, had a very incredible experience Right before. What's the pinnacle? The pinnacle of Yom Kippur, musaf. We're going to talk about the offerings that were brought in the temple on Yom Kippur. We're going to talk about how the Kohen went in to the Holy of Holies One time a year, that the Kohen went into the Holy of Holies with a string wrapped around his ankle because if he died, if he had one non-pure thought, boom, he'd die and the people were waiting to see. Did he make it out alive? Did he make it out alive? It's such an incredible point of Yom Kippur.

11:19
So my grandfather's in yeshiva and they're right at the beginning of Yom Kippur Musaf prayer, the afternoon prayer, and one of the students, the elder students of the yeshiva, comes to my grandfather and says where is so and so? So my grandfather says oh, I heard he wasn't feeling well. So he says so, did you visit him? Yet he says visit him now. We're about to pray the Musa prayer. What do you mean? Visit him now. So the student says to my grandfather it's the mitzvah of the day. The mitzvah of the day. The mitzvah of the day. My grandfather's like what? Okay? My grandfather goes. He says okay, I was just taught. It's the mitzvah of the day I'm going to go, he goes to the bedside of this individual. And who else is there visiting him? All of the lions of the yeshiva, the greatest righteous, holiest students. And we're talking about, my grandfather said, reb Leib Malin, you're talking about Torah giants. We're sitting at the bedside of this individual when, at the most important time of Yom Kippur, because Yom Kippur doesn't mean be selfish, it means be selfless. Demonstrate what it it means be selfless, demonstrate what it means to be selfless. Demonstrate what it means. You know what to lose the night of sleep.

12:38
My daughter came home that morning. I came home in the middle of davening to check up on her and she was in bed. I said to her is everything okay? She said well, the baby that I was babysitting. Four children were at that house. The baby was up till 7.30 in the morning.

12:57
So she said I didn't sleep. I said she said it's 7.30, I finally went to sleep and then 8.30, the children woke up, so I had an hour of sleep. And then 8.30, the children woke up, so I had an hour of sleep. So I said don't worry, you fulfilled your mitzvah of Yom Kippur. You can sleep and enjoy. And she said but I already davened the morning prayer, I already davened shachris Right To me. I was amazed. I was amazed because that is the essence of Yom Kippur, and the day, the day after Yom Kippur, is a day of total joy.

13:26
It's a day where we should feel like we lost a million pounds. Not of money, not European pounds or, you know, british pounds. We're talking about weight pounds. We lost the weight of our sins. We lost the weight of all of that.

13:43
Hashem forgives us. We ask for forgiveness. Hashem gives us forgiveness Because we demonstrate we're not going to be selfish. We're going to be selfless. We're going to. You know what? Sit in my seat, it's fine. I know it's a reserved seat. I've been sitting here for years. It's fine, just sit, it's fine, selfless, whatever it may be, you see, someone needs something. You take care of them. This is the amazing gift of Yom Kippur.

14:09
We come after Yom Kippur. Now we're free to just serve Hashem. How do we do that? We say Hashem, we're not going to get into our old habits of living, our regular life of pattern, our regular life of habit, our regular life of routine. We're gonna change of routine. We're going to change that. How are we going to change it? We're going to change it by leaving our homes, starting new habits, starting new, fresh beginning.

14:36
We leave our homes for seven days, we sit in the sukkah and before we go back into our home we have a special prayer, magnific, magnificent prayer. Oh, he doesn't have the full version of it, but there's a special prayer as we leave the sukkah. And in that prayer, what are we saying? We're saying we demonstrated physically how we're making change in our lives because we left our homes and it's not so comfortable to sit in the sukkah. We don't exactly sit in the lap of luxury in our sukkah, especially not in Houston when it could be a hazy, hot and humid, 90 degrees in our sukkah and we're like a little schwitzing and it's a little bit uncomfortable. That's part of us getting uncomfortable and not getting comfortable in our homes. Not getting comfortable in our homes.

15:32
Our sages tell us an interesting thing that if a person becomes pained meaning I'm disappointed with being in the sukkah meaning it's like you can't eat your soup because it's raining into your soup, so you can't eat your food because everything is getting wet, so you're in pain from it. In such a case, you can go inside when you're in pain. Meaning you've gotten to the point where you're living that discomfort. Ah, now you can go inside. Now you can go inside. Now you can go inside Because you've gotten to the point of discomfort. That's what we're trying to do on Sukkot. Yeah, we're trying to enjoy the outdoors. It would be ideal if it was 68 degrees, it would be ideal, but you know what? Then you may not feel discomfort. The idea is to feel a little bit discomfort before we go back in into our routine, into our world, inside.

16:32
Hashem should bless us all. We should merit to a magnificent, beautiful Sukkot. It should be one which is enriched with closeness with Hashem and Hashem should guide us, god willing, for a beautiful new year that we have already. We're already 11 days into our new year. Hashem should bless us that the rest of our year should be filled with total blessing, total success, total happiness. And another thing I noticed in our prayer there's a lot of mention about livelihood in our prayer on Yom Kippur. A lot of mention for livelihood. Do you know why? Because if a person doesn't have a frame of mind of I know that my livelihood is taken care of by the Almighty, then what happens? They're constantly busy and concerned. They can't serve Hashem the same way, because they're worried. If a person is worried, they can't serve Hashem properly. So we ask for livelihood as part of our service of Hashem. Hashem should bless us all, that our livelihood, that our health and our families should all be well this year. Amen.

17:36 - Intro (Announcement)
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