Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

Good evening and welcome back to way number 14, b'mikra, with the written law. One of the foundations of a successful life is follow instructions. Follow instructions. Any item that you buy, whether it be a table, a chair, a light bulb, an electrical extension cord will always come with a manual. Because if the purpose of this item is for you to enjoy it and use it, then we need to give you a manual to teach you how to use it, to give you the instructions.
In this world, how do we live life to its fullest? Look at the owner's manual. You know, when babies are born, they don't come with a little handbook. They're holding on when a baby is born, it comes out of the mother's womb, and it's holding a little manual. This is how you should raise me here, mommy and daddy. This is how you should raise me. No, there's no manual. There's no manual. So how do we know how to raise this child?
How do we know the way to live life? Hashem, before creating the world, had the manual. He says, look, this is the blueprint of the world. This is the key to success. You want to know how to succeed in life? These are the guidelines. Now you're looking at me, you're saying, really? There are plenty of millionaires and billionaires who have tremendous success, and they don't follow a word of the Torah. Do they? Last I checked, the three wealthiest men on planet Earth are single.
They can't even work out a relationship. Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. You name me someone who is successful financially, it does not mean that they're successful in being a good husband, in being a good father. So what does it mean, when we have a Torah, that this is the manual for living? There is nothing, there's no mannerisms, there's no traits, there's no morals or ethics that are not written in the Torah. They're all in the Torah.
By the way, the book of Genesis seems to be a book of stories. It's not stories. It's teaching us how to conduct our lives with morals, with ethics, with proper conduct, with law and order, etc., etc. Read the manual. Everything comes with a manual. The Torah is the user's manual to an enjoyable and fulfilled journey through life. You wouldn't travel without a map, without a GPS. A new driver is concerned they don't have a GPS, they don't have a way, a map, Google
maps or ways to show them how to travel. They don't know where to go. They're concerned. They're worried. Each one of us, the best way to live life is with a map. What's that map? That's the Torah. Let it guide you through life. It's not a history book. It's not a story book. And it's not either a book of laws. It's a book of life. And that's why way number 14 is with the written Torah, the God-given five books of Moses.
And we should know that it's not only the five books of Moses. They're actually in Tanakh, what's known as the written law, the written Torah. There are 24 books. There are five books of the Torah, known as the five books of Moses, revealed to the Jewish people by God at Mount Sinai. Then you have the eight books of the prophets. God spoke to numerous prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, who transmitted messages strengthening the Jewish commitment to Torah. And then we have the 11 books of writing, the Ketuvim.
And together, all three Torah, Nevi'im, Ketuvim is Tanakh. The writings of the Proverbs, Psalms, Esther, etc., etc., they emphasize God's message in a more poetic style. You read the Bible from beginning to end. I recommend it. Get a copy, the Stone Edition Chumash. Get any Chumash, any Torah with a bona fide translation and read through it. Learn it, but get an authentic Jewish translation and read it from cover to cover. This is the book of our life.
The Torah, the Tanakh, tells us what to do, but the oral Torah tells you how to do. It's a very important idea. People say, well, I only follow the words of the Torah exactly as written. Well, that's ignorance, because the Torah only tells you, the written Torah only tells you what to do, it doesn't tell you how to do. There are many examples we've talked about in the past, but just to name a few again, mezuzah. It says to place a mezuzah on your door.
It doesn't say what a mezuzah is. It doesn't say where on the door. It doesn't say what direction it should be facing. It doesn't say what a mezuzah is. Just place the mezuzah on your door. It says to put on tefillin, phylacteries. It doesn't say what phylacteries are. It says to slaughter an animal. It doesn't say how. So all of the laws given in the Torah are telling us what to do but not how to do, which
is going to be the next way we're going to talk about the how-to, which is the oral Torah. So having a strong belief in the truth of the Torah and its direct transmission throughout the generations is a key. We have to understand that we can't have doubts about the veracity, about the truth, authenticity of the Torah. And it's very simple. The easiest, simplest proof is that this is the only document that was a public revelation given by God to a multitude of people.
If you count properly, it's over 3 million people who saw with their own eyes the revelation at Mount Sinai. If you look at it, there's no other religion that has a public revelation. The other religions have to threaten and frighten people to death, literally, believe in Islam, believe in Christianity, or else how many millions of people have been murdered because of not accepting those religions. So Judaism is about truth. It's all about truth. The Torah is about truth.
The Torah is the manuscript, the blueprint of this world, and it was given in a public revelation. Why is it significant that it's public? Because if even one fact written in the Torah is not accurate, everyone would throw it right out. If I gave you a book and said, here, this is your new Torah, I am your God, follow my commandments, and in it, it says that on the 12th day of the month of October, we flew over the clouds
and we saw rainbows and unicorns, and you'd be like, this guy's out of his mind. You'd probably take whatever laws it says in there, like playing hopscotch every morning. That would be one of the laws in this make-believe Bible. And now you're going to have to follow it, or else someone's going to kill you. You'd say, this is crazy, this never happened. We never flew over the moon, we never flew over the clouds, we never saw unicorns, and we never saw rainbows as described in this godly document.
But here you have over 3 million Jews standing at the foot of Mount Sinai. God transcribes the Torah, and everybody gets their copy of the Torah, and they're like, yeah, that's exactly what happened. Indeed, yes, it happened like this, and it happened like that, and it happened like this, and it happened like that. Every word of the Torah is being scrutinized. And don't forget, they're not being scrutinized by nice people in a public library. They're being scrutinized by Jews who ask questions, who like to find problems,
and to contradict you. That's who's verifying the truth of the Torah. So that's a very simplistic explanation. So a person should learn Torah, discover God's instructions for living. Don't wait until your life is almost over to then say, oh, you know what, I should look now, when I'm almost done with this game, how to play it with the right instructions. Imagine this, Monopoly is a complicated game. Unless you know how to play.
If you read the instructions, you know how to play, and then it's not so complicated. That's exactly the same thing with Judaism. It seems very complicated if you don't know how to play the game. It's not a game, though, it's life. If a person invests in learning the rules of the game, they'll have a very beautiful, awesome life. I'll tell you something else as well. You take the game of Monopoly, any game, and you open it up, and you say, let's read the instructions.
The first time we open this game, let's read the instructions. No, I don't need the instructions, come on, it's a board game, it's not so difficult. Then you have these green houses, and the red houses, and you have the cards, and you have the money, and you have all these little pieces, and you're like, let's see, and you have the dice, and you have all of these different things. What's the likelihood that you'll actually enjoy the game, playing it, without knowing any of the rules?
Not likely, and that's just a game of Monopoly. How about life? What's the likelihood that we figure out life without reading the manual? Just by chance. It's highly unlikely, and now we know why people invest their entire lives sitting in yeshiva, studying Torah all day long. They're reading that manual, they want to know how to maximize every second of life. They realize, hopefully, that the clock is ticking, and life isn't forever, and I need to make that investment now, because there's no tomorrow.
There may not be a tomorrow. Understand the Torah. It's the book that changed the world. Ask questions until you know the message in great detail. Ask questions. You see, every one of these, there are probably a thousand books here on the shelves. Do you know what each one of these books are here for? To answer questions! They're all here to answer questions, because that's what Judaism is about. We're not telling you a fairy tale. The Torah is about a guide to life.
So that's the purpose. The purpose is to now let's ask questions. It's my life. I have to be responsible to maximize it. Correlate any differences and resolve them. There is no unintentional discrepancies in the Torah. Look in the book and you will find it. Ha'afochpa ve'ha'afochpa tekul oba. You immerse yourself in it more and more, and everything is in the Torah. There's nothing. You can't tell me one single scientific experiment or revelation or discovery that isn't in the Torah. Everything's in the Torah.
No such thing. Ha'afochpa ve'ha'afochpa tekul oba. Everything is there. Organize it. Wisdom is only useful when it's at your fingertips. The Torah should be your encyclopedia, your almanac and index for living. Review the Torah in order to remember it. So learn it, organize it, review it in order to remember. You wouldn't head out on an open road without a map, we mentioned, right? When going through life, don't leave the Torah behind.
You want to review it and have a good grasp on it, and then integrate it. Make it part of your life. Make the ideas part of your reality. Rabbi Kiva said that a Jew without Torah is like a fish without water. A fish can't exist without water. A Jew can't exist without Torah. And then update the Torah, meaning renew Torah wisdom as your life situation changes. As we grow older, our circumstances change, our Torah, our knowledge, our insight should change as well.
We did before Pesach, we studied the Haggadah. People told me, you know something? Till now, I've been learning for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, I've been doing the Haggadah exactly the way I did it when I was six years old and learned it the first time. They didn't update it. Update your knowledge, meaning to the maturity level, to the intellect. We develop more in other areas. We should develop more in our Torah as well. And the last is upgrade.
The first paragraph of the Shema contains 48 words corresponding to the 48 ways that we are studying now. Torah wisdom is infinitely vast. Always delve one level deeper. I can't begin to tell you how many times I have looked at different sources to discuss, to learn more about these 48 ways, and there are times I'm like, okay, I got it now. I got the whole picture. And then a few months later, I open up, I read another story, I hear a lecture, and
it opens up a whole new perspective on the 48 ways, again, when I thought I had every commentary possible on it. Upgrade it, constantly learn more about it, because there's always more to learn. Adam comes from the word Adama, from earth, which is also the word Adameh, which means to emulate. It's not enough for us to just be good people. We have to use every resource we have to emulate the Almighty, to become God-like in our life. Every Parsha that we study speaks of the current events.
You want to know about current events? Look in the Parsha, read the story in the newspaper, watch it in the news, and then read your Torah portion and be like, oh my goodness, this correlates, this connects. Western morality and wisdom binds its source in the Torah. Its knowledge is infinite. It is as valuable today as it ever was. The Torah doesn't expire. The Torah doesn't have a best-by date, like your milk carton. That is the written Torah.
It is essential for us to gain a grasp of the written Torah so we know the manual for living. Thank you, my dear friends. Have a good evening.