Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of Torch in Houston, Texas. This is the Prayer Podcast.

All right, welcome back everybody. Welcome to the Prayer Podcast. Today we're going to look at the first few verses of part two of Hodu. As we said, the first part of Hodu was said with the morning offerings, the Tamitzel Shachar, and the second part, which is what we're going to read today, is part of what was said, according to some opinions, during, some after the afternoon
offerings were brought, the Tamid Shel Bein HaArbaim. And let's read it inside. We'll read it in Hebrew, we'll read it in the English, and then we'll try to derive some understanding from each of these verses. Now again, these verses are primarily from Psalms and they go as follows. Seeing to Hashem everyone on earth announce his salvation daily. We're going to explain this in a moment, but what we're seeing here is we're declaring to the nations of the world that Hashem is the authentic source of everything.
Hashem is the authentic source of everything. As we'll see in a minute, we're going to be praising the heavens and the earth that were created by Hashem, while the nations of the world idolize the heavens and the earth themselves. No, no, no. Go to the source. The source of creation of heaven and earth is from Hashem. Relate his glory among the nations, among all the nations his wonders. That Hashem is great and exceedingly lauded and awesome is he above all heavenly powers.
For all the gods of the people are nothing but Hashem made heaven. For all the gods of the people are nothing but Hashem made heaven. Glory and majesty are before him. Might and delight are in his place. Might and delight are in his place. So these are the first five verses of section two. We mentioned that there are three parts of Hodu. Let's look a little bit at the first verse. Sing to Hashem. Sing to Hashem. We mentioned previously that when you start
talking about the praises of Hashem, it will lead you to singing the praise of Hashem. It will lead you to a point where you'll be so excited by all of the goodness that Hashem bestows upon us that you'll turn, it'll turn into song. Everyone on earth, they would sing, everyone would announce that Hashem is the one who brings salvation, always saving us from our enemies. Interestingly, Rav Hirsch says that announce his salvation every day. He says
daily salvation from Hashem. Every challenge that we have, Hashem is there to help us. But then he says something very important. What's basur miyom? To clear it daily. Rav Hirsch says that if you don't declare it daily, you'll forget. Every day. We say, yeah, I thanked Hashem yesterday. What do I need to thank Him again today? You have to constantly remind yourself and remind yourself and remind yourself. We talked about this. Why do we have the command to recite a hundred blessings every day?
We learned this from a verse in Deuteronomy. Umoh Hashem, shol mimoch. What does Hashem ask of you? Our sages say in the Talmud, don't read it umoh, what? But rather mea, a hundred blessings, referring to the hundred blessings that we should recite every day. What is that? You see, if we don't recite blessings and acknowledge and recognize that Hashem has bestowed the goodness upon us, we're going to forget. We mentioned that in a relationship, in a relationship, a woman remembers everything. She remembers everything
except for how much you love her. She needs to be constantly reminded. I love you. I love you. I love you. I told you yesterday. I love you. I need to tell you again today. She forgets. In the same way, and this is I think very, very important, in the same way that if a person doesn't remember and recognize G-d, basr miyom, yom mishuasot, you forget that Hashem brings salvation, that Hashem gives you everything you have, you're going to forget it if you don't declare it.
The same thing, you wonder, you can stand with your friends. Mark, you hear this? Mark, you can stand with your friends and everyone is quetching about their wives and everyone is saying, oh my wife. It's big. It's one reason. It's because they don't say I love you enough. It's because they don't recognize and talk about the greatness of their spouse enough. They forget what a blessing they have. How? How can you forget? Very easy to forget.
It's very easy to forget and that's why we need not only to remind our beloved wives respectively of how much they are loved, how much we love them, it's to remind ourselves how gifted we are that we have this relationship, how gifted we are that we are blessed with this. Basr miyom, yom mishuasot. Don't let your recognition of Hashem's salvation skip even a day. Sapru b'goyim eskevoydei. Relate His glory among the nations. Go out and declare it to the nations. The nations,
we need to announce it to them. Now what's the, we use two terms here. Sapru b'goyim eskevoydei, among the nations, relate Hashem's glory. Bechol ha'amim, among all the nations, His wonders. What's the difference? They're both terminology for nation. Well one is goyim. By the way, the Jewish people are called a goy, a goy kadosh, a holy nation. It's not a derogatory statement. Someone should let Candace know this, right? The goy is not a negative statement towards the nations. It literally means nation.
The Jewish people are also called a goy, a goy kadosh, a holy nation. Same terminology. But one is called a goy and one is called an haam. We say haam Yisrael chai. What's the difference between a goy and a haam? A goy, our sages teach us, comes from the word gav, which means outside. Not gav with a bet, gav with a vav. It means outside. While haam comes from the word im, with. One is in, one is out.
One is a feeling a connection, a feeling of closeness and one is you're on your own. The Jewish people are an haam. That's why achtos, being one with another. One nation, one soul. When we stood at the foot of Mount Sinai, we were ki ish echad b'lev echad, one nation, one soul. We were an haam. We were together with one. We became a nation because we were there unified at Mount Sinai. We don't have to fight for ourselves. We fight together in unity.
Even in this war that we're seeing now with Iran, even the craziest leftist opposition declared, he said to Iran, he said, if you think that just because we have disagreements here we're not united against you, we are, a hundred percent. And the opposition will sit together with the parliament, together with the 60 members of Knesset who are in the coalition because we're going to eradicate evil from this world. We need to always remember that although we have different perspectives,
we still have to remember that we're brothers. It's okay for us to have 12 channels in the splitting of the sea that each of the tribes walked in their own channel, but we're still walking through the water together. We're in it together and we're there for one another. No matter which flag we walk under, no matter which affiliation we consider ourselves part of, we are a group, not a bunch of individuals. Kigadol Hashem u'muhulol me'od. Hashem is great and exceedingly lauded.
U'muhulol me'od v'norohu al kol haim. And awesome is He above all heavenly powers. Our sages tell us that we need to tell the world that Hashem is great. We almost think that these are like the Evangelicals. They're standing at the street corners with those microphones. On Sunday morning you see them saying, praise be the Lord, right? That's our job. They're doing our job. We need to be doing that. We need to be out there and declaring in the most dignified way in
a way that the nations can learn and come close Hashem is feared more than all gods. There are many, many false gods. There are many gods that have many, many, many, many, many, many millions and billions of followers. We're talking Kigadol Hashem u'muhulol me'od v'norohu al kol haim. Hashem is greater than any other God. We mentioned yesterday Hashem echad, Hashem is one. Hashem is one. The oneness of Hashem. There's no parts to Hashem. You know, we have this great phrase that the Hasidic movement
uses a lot, which we have to be extremely cautious with. It's true. It's a correct phrase. The phrase is that everyone has a chelek elokam imal. Everyone has a piece of God within them. Well, God isn't divisible into pieces. So what does that mean? In a metaphoric way, in a concept way, we have a part of godliness within us. But you don't chop up God into pieces and here you got a piece in you.
The idea is that you can act in a godly way. You can be godly. You don't have to be physical, materialistic, and lowly. You can be elevated. You can be godlike. Other gods have been proved to be non-entities. Ki gadol Hashem ikol olehim. Hashem is greater than all other gods. So we see gadol and we see nora. Hashem is great and Hashem is awesome. Ki kol elohei haamim elilim. For all the gods of the peoples, they're nothing. They're nothing. Elilim. They're nothing. What is elilim?
Low kale. There's no God. There's nothing really there. Hashem shamayim oso. But Hashem, what did Hashem do? Hashem is the creator of heaven and earth. It's like when we see in the first of the Ten Commandments, we say, Hashem says, Hashem declares, Anochi Hashem elokecha? I am Hashem, your God. Okay, period. That's it. No! It's qualified. How? Asher etzatzichim eretzem tzrayim. Who took you out of Egypt. It's not a leap of faith. It's not just,
believe it because I said so, or else you'll have eternal damnation if you question it. If you don't take that leap of faith, it's all over. You're considered an infidel and we'll kill you with jihad. No, not in Judaism. It's qualified. You know why I'm Hashem your God? I'm going to give you the actual proof because I took you out of Egypt. I am God not because I said so. I'm God because I created heaven and earth. And if you look in my creation, you see me.
Kikol elokeha amim el ilim. El ilim means low kale. There is no God. There's nothing there. Hashem shamayim oso, but our God creator of heaven and earth. He's the creator of everything that exists. So I want to I want to focus on these four first verses here so that we can just internalize it and we can we can see to it that we don't just live a life. Yeah, I know there's a God. No, no. No, it has to be declared.
B'as tu miyom el yom ishu asoy. Daily, hourly, if we took the 18 hours a day that we are awake and we divided it by the hundred blessings that we're required to say, it would be the equivalent of every seven and a half minutes giving a praise to Hashem. A hundred times a day. Because that's how long it takes to forget. It takes that long, in other words that short, to forget
all the gifts that Hashem has given us. And the minute we forget, the minute we stop recognizing, the minute we stop acknowledging the gifts that we have from Hashem, we start forgetting. And then we ask what did God do for me today? What do you mean what did God do for you today? You forgot that all of life is from Hashem. We start our day with modeh ani, thanking Hashem for giving us our soul. That's the first words we recite when we wake up.
We declare, we recognize that life itself is a gift from God. It's God believing in us. Raba emunatecha. Hashem believes in us. Hashem has faith in us. Hashem knows what we are capable of and that's why He gives us another day. These declarations need to be recited every day. Shi'ul Hashem, kol ha'aretz, wherever you are, in every situation, with every challenge you face, sing to Hashem. Sing His praise because that is our getting closer to Hashem, bringing ourselves closer to Hashem, and
bringing the nations of the world closer to Hashem. So my dear friends, we're going to stop here and God willing next week we'll continue and hopefully, maybe we'll be able to finish to the end of this section. Maybe we'll need a little bit more time, but I don't want to gloss over everything and then not have a chance to really internalize this, to declare the greatness of Hashem.
First internally and then sing it out to the world so the world can hear it, that the world can experience it, the world can see it. My dear friends, have an amazing week.

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