Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe Podcast Collection

Welcome back everybody, this is way number nine. Way number nine is Bithahara, with purity. What comes in mind when you think of the word pure? What is a pure person, a pure soul, a pure action or deed, or a pure thought? So we know when we think of pure, at least for me, that pure means unadulterated. No additives. When you see a pure person, there's no ears about them. They're genuine. They're real. A pure soul is someone who's just innocent, without negative influence.
Pure action has no ulterior motives. There's no layers on top of it. A pure thought is that you don't have any, you have no angles on it. We are born pure. In our prayers every morning we say, Elokai, my master, Nishama shenasatabi tahorai. The soul that you've placed within me is pure. Pure means that there's nothing else added. It's pure. We are the product of our environment. We have to know this. We are influenced by our environment.
If we allow ourselves to be influenced negatively, we will be influenced by our environment. I remember a true story that happened to me when I was a little boy, about nine or ten years old. I got into a fight with one of my brothers. He's older than me, so there was no chance. I guess I got very mad and said a word that I should never have said. My mother got very upset. She said, you wait till daddy gets home. My father gets home.
My father sat me lovingly on his lap in front of the front porch of the house. Remember it like it was today. He says to me, I'm not upset that you said what you said. I just want to know where you learned this from. I showed him right across the street was a public school. I'd play in the schoolyard. I didn't learn there. I went to yeshiva. But after school, in the afternoon, in the evening, we'd play basketball, we'd play baseball,
we'd play stickball, we'd run around, ride our bikes in the public schoolyard. But who was there with us? We had people from many different cultures there. We had Puerto Ricans, we had Italians, we had African Americans, we had, you name it, we had them there. That's the way they spoke. I was in an environment that spoke with foul language. So I was influenced by that. My parents, because of this incident, moved to another city, to a place where we don't have such influences.
And thank God that was a very good, very smart thing, because you have to put your kids, you can't expect your kids to be in an environment that has negative influence and not be negatively impacted. We are what we think. If we think pure thoughts, if we think holy thoughts, that's who we are. That's what we are. History implies the real thing. No adulteration, no additives or preservatives. Jewish tradition declares that the mind has 70 different tracks.
Once you learn to concentrate, to use one track, you can get your mind on the remaining 69. An awful lot goes through your mind. The first step is gaining control of your concentration. Master a single track. Right now, while we're learning and we're discussing this very important topic, we could be thinking about, oh, I have to remember when I get home to put that into the washing machine and I have to make sure to put that back into the freezer if I left it on the kitchen table.
And I have to remember to send that email and I have to, we have all these things going through our minds. And, by the way, we also have our brain, which is sending a message every single second for your heart to beat, right? And for your lungs to take in oxygen and giving all the instructions that your body needs while we're talking and learning and thinking about the refrigerator. We have 70 tracks, our sages tell us. Imagine if we had control of all 70.
Interrupt the daydreaming process. Be conscious and live. Don't daydream through life. I had someone I just met today who said to me something so special. He said, I realized, I asked him, he came, he said he wanted to learn Torah. I said, you came to the right place. He's interested in learning Torah. So what inspired you? What suddenly now you decided you're going to start learning? He says, I realized that I was daydreaming through life.
And one day it just dawned on me that if I don't invest in my own Judaism, it's not going to happen on its own. So I reached out and that's why we met today. Most people are existing, not living. Apply yourself to the task with single-minded dedication, focus, incorporate what you've studied into your behavior. You learn something. How do you make it part of you? If it's truth, if it's MS, if it's Torah, how do you make it part of you?
It shouldn't just be a brain exercise. Study it one idea at a time and clarify it to the fullest extent. Purity is consistency, concentrating without distractions. You know, Rabbi Akiva had 12,000 peers of students. But one of the things that's told about Rabbi Akiva, something else having to do with the number 24, is that he went to learn in yeshiva for 24 years. Amazing thing. But you know, there's something that's told about that story, that he went to learn for 12 years.
He came back home to say hello to his wife after 12 years not being home, and he overheard his wife say, I wish he went back for another 12 years. So he turned around and went back to yeshiva to learn for another 12 years. You know why? Because 12 plus 12 doesn't equal 24. In numbers it does, but in consistency it doesn't. 24 is one number. It's one solid unit. 12 and 12 is two separate units.
The consistency of Torah study is by how dedicated we are without interruption. Because you're able to sink your mind deeper and deeper and deeper. Every time you get distracted, you have to get your mind back into the thought, so where was I? And you have to start all over again. It takes a longer, it's longer, a longer process for one to dig deeper into his thoughts. Why do retreats work? When people want to do a transformative weekend, they do, they get away, it's a getaway.
It's transformative because once we leave our environment, our home, our regular schedule, it gives us the ability to now start taking in new information. Right now we operate on autopilot, no, no, no, no. Now no more autopilot, you're in a new environment, a new schedule. That's why these retreats are very powerful. Our generation today has a phone obsession. I think that it's important, I try to do this every couple of months where I just take a
break from my smartphone and go on to what's known as a dumb phone. And I use a dumb phone for a week or two just to withdraw from it a little bit. You know, we have an amazing gift, the greatest gift that God declares is his greatest gift on planet earth is the gift of Shabbos. Shabbos is a time to stop the routine of day after day after day working and just like, ah, and not only that, God says this day is on me. This day is on me.
I want to share with you, you want to hear what purity is. Maran Ovadia Yosef, the great leader of the Jewish people, he was the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel. So he was known for his deep concentration, for his ability to really delve into a thought in Torah, in Judaism. He was about to have surgery and he asks the doctor, what are you planning to do? They said, oh, anesthesia, we're going to put you to sleep.
And he says, no, no, no, no, no, no, I can't be put to sleep. They said, this surgery is very, very painful. You can't not be put to sleep, you can't be sedated, not sedated. He says, no, no, no, no. He says to them, give me a few minutes. He starts thinking about a piece of Talmud deeper and deeper and deeper into thought. And then he says to them, now you can begin. And he's thinking these thoughts of the Talmud, thinking, and he's going, not sedated, nothing.
Very painful procedure. And he's deep, deep in thought. And suddenly they interrupt him to tell him the surgery is over. But he's like, he's like, sort of from his concentration, he says, can you guys get started already? He didn't even feel it. That's how strong his concentration. Now, I don't suggest that anybody in our generation has that kind of ability. But he was a very, very special man. We have six constant mitzvot that we can observe every single minute of the day.
Concentrate on those mitzvot. Take one emotion and experience it to the fullest. Many times we're jumping from one experience to another. We don't get a chance to really take it all in. You have a family get together. Just take it all in. Take it all in. Instead people are, what's the next thrill? What's the next thrill? What's the next thing? So you are the master of your mind. You can train it to focus. Block out insanity.
Mean what you say and say what you mean. And like I said numerous times, you are the gatekeeper of your environment. You're a product of your environment. My rabbi has made a policy with all the students. Mind you, they're all rabbis. They all have smicha rabbinic ordination. They're all hopefully influencing in communities around the world. And he said protect yourself and your family and your own spirituality. Get yourself a web filter. So I do.
I have one on my phone and I have one on my computer. A web filter. You know why? To protect yourself. To keep yourself, what we say here, purity. Keep yourself pure. It doesn't make you less of a man having a filter. It doesn't make you less of an open-minded person. You can read the news. It blocks out the things that are inappropriate. You don't need to see it. You don't need to poison your eyes, poison your mind, poison your innocence, poison your soul.
Rabbi Yossi, they said in the end of chapter 5 in Ethics of Our Fathers, there's a story, they said to Rabbi Yossi, come live with us in our place. Come to our community. Come live with us. He said I will only live in a place of Torah. When they said live with us, meaning be like us, be with us. And basically you're just more knowledgeable. That doesn't, he says, no, no, no.
I'm only going to live, actually the end of chapter 6, he says I will only live in a place of Torah. I'm going to live in a place of Torah. You guys can come join me. If you allow yourself to be influenced, you will be influenced. I want to just end off with one quick story. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein was arguing with some secularized modern Orthodox rabbis and they had a big halakhic disagreement of a matter of Jewish law.
And at the end the rabbi, Rabbi Feinstein, who was by far the leading figurehead in the Jewish community in the United States until he passed away in 1986, so he said this is the ruling. It goes like me. And case closed. He said, what do you mean? Yeah, you're a rabbi. I'm a rabbi, right? He said, I'll tell you why. I'm right because my opinion is pristine. I haven't been influenced by any secular intake of knowledge. I have no outside sources.
He didn't watch movies. He didn't read secular books. He didn't read all this philosophy from the, from the, from the, he says my entire world is Torah. Nothing else. It's pure, unadulterated, and therefore it's right. Mine is pure. Yours isn't. My dear friends, let's take this ninth trait, this ninth way of purity, and keep ourselves in a life that is holy, that is pristine, and that is unadulterated from outside elements. Thank you, and we'll see you in the next of the 48 Ways.