How to Get Your Children Excited About Torah? - Rabbi Shraga Noson Dahan shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lemaan Yishme’u,” a podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 Rabbi Meir Baal Haness used to give talks and classes. One day, a woman came to one of his classes. The class ran long—it was interesting, and he kept talking, and it didn’t end. She got home late, and her husband asked, “Why are you only getting home now?” She said, “The rabbi giving the class didn’t finish, and the class was long.” Her husband was terribly angry. He told her, “Go and spit at him. I won’t forgive you until you spit at him. Go and spit at him! How can he interfere with our marriage and keep you from coming home for so long?” Rabbi Meir Baal Haness heard about it and put out word that he was terribly ill, with a severe inflammation in his eyes, and that the way to cure it was for someone to spit in his eyes. The woman came, and he told her, “I need you to spit in my eyes seven times.” So she spat seven times, and he said, “Good. Now I’ll get better.” He told her, “Now you can go back to your husband and tell him you didn’t spit just once. You love him so much that you went further—you spat seven times.” That was Rabbi Meir Baal Haness. Sometimes our ability to take difficult situations, bring out what is in them, and lift them to a very high place is the difference between a challenge and a crisis. Matan Torah gave us an opportunity, a wonderful opportunity. It says, “And Israel encamped there, opposite the mountain.” We come to receive the Torah, but until then we had been doing whatever we wanted. We had no obligations, nothing at all. We had only just left Egypt and wanted to be free, and suddenly we’re told: No, you are not free

02:21 Speaker 2 to desist from it. You can’t stop engaging in Torah. And you say, “But why? Where’s the freedom? Where’s the freedom in this? It’s a burden. Why do I have to endure so much?” Matan Torah is a defining event. When we look back thousands of years after Matan Torah, we ask ourselves: Is receiving the Torah and keeping mitzvos at home an existential threat to the home? Or is it the opposite—a means of bringing blessing into the home? That’s the big question we’re going to discuss today. More precisely, we’ll focus on how to receive the Torah with love and see it as a challenge that strengthens the home, rather than a threat to its wholeness. One of the interesting passages we’ll read this week, right after Shavuos—outside Israel they won’t read it, so they’ll fall a week behind us—is in Parshas Naso, where it speaks about a sotah. What is a sotah? She is a woman whose husband suspects her of being with another man and has warned her. He tells her, “I see that you have a very warm friendship with Shlomo, so I’m asking you: Don’t be alone with him in a closed room.” It’s always a problem to be alone in a closed room with someone of the opposite sex; that’s the prohibition of yichud. It’s even more of a problem when there’s a very close relationship and cause for suspicion, because our Sages say, “There is no guardian against forbidden relations.” So her husband tells her, “I don’t want you to seclude yourself”—meaning in a room with that man—and there are witnesses, one witness or two; that’s discussed. But she disregards his warning. Maybe she really thinks she’s strong enough to handle anything and says, “It won’t happen to me,” or maybe she couldn’t hold out, she couldn’t

05:00 Speaker 2 restrain herself. Our Sages ask: What does “tis’teh,” meaning “go astray,” tell us? It’s written with a shin, not a samech. What does that mean? It says that a woman only goes astray because a spirit of folly enters her, leading her off the path. We stray from the path only because something draws us away from it. A spirit of folly doesn’t mean we’re crazy. It can even be something positive. Without a bit of folly at home, I’m not sure I could run a household. I need to be a little playful. When I’m with the whole family on Shabbos, I need to break out of that stiff, serious persona a little. On the contrary, I need to be a little easygoing too—to smile, sing, dance, and let loose a little. Creativity comes from precisely that place, that spirit of folly. But the question is: What kind of folly? What kind of folly? Sometimes, with all our foolishness, we don’t distinguish between holy folly and a spirit of folly that takes us elsewhere. Our task is to take that enthusiasm and put it to its best use, refine it, and focus it. And that’s really the central point of Matan Torah. Matan Torah: Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us a Torah with laws and instructions. Everything is very orderly, and it seems we simply have to observe it. That’s it. Are you happy? Are you unhappy? Do you love it or not? It makes no difference. The Giver of the Torah, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, commanded us laws and ordinances to guard, do, and fulfill, and all that remains for us is to fulfill those mitzvos. We don’t even need to exercise judgment. But then Hakadosh Boruch Hu chooses to give us the Torah in another way. He sets up two things, two very interesting processes. The first is refinement. You want to receive the Torah now? That takes refinement, working on your middos, cleansing yourself. You want

07:46 Speaker 2 to receive the Torah? Get ready. It’s not so simple. Let’s see you take all your traits—don’t become someone different; change them. Don’t become someone different. Take all your traits and make them shine. We spoke about this in earlier classes. Sefiras HaOmer: taking them, like a sapphire, a stone that shines, and making your middos shine. Look deep, deep inside yourself and see which middos you have, how you use them, and how you direct them. How do you get them to work better? And now that you’ve worked through your middos—not that... no, you haven’t become someone different. You’re still you. You’re still yourself. But now you’re more yourself than before. Before, you didn’t know how to make use of the strengths you have. You didn’t know how to make use of your middos, and now you’ll use them for good things. In the world of computers and software, there’s a process called defrag. What is defrag? There are lots of lost folders taking up space in the computer’s memory, and sometimes they simply clog the system. Sometimes the files lack the necessary connections between them. Defrag is a process that compresses everything, goes through it all, and arranges it. It puts each thing in exactly the right place alongside the others, so each one knows what it needs to do, how, and when. What’s the result? The computer works better. It’s faster, finds information more easily, and can carry out processes much more effectively. We have traits too. Everyone has traits. Some middos are stronger in one person and weaker in another, but that person makes up for it with other middos that he has and I don’t. In the end, there’s a balance. Everyone has their own place, their own way of serving Hashem. The question is how to do it right.

10:09 Speaker 2 Just before we receive Torah—in the sense of instruction—just before we become committed to a path, just before we enter the data into our human GPS, we calibrate the machine. We are the machine. We calibrate it, meaning we adjust ourselves, get ourselves aligned, and then put our... arrange all our middos. Because you might ask yourself, “But I really, really love to run. What do I do with that? I really love to play music. What do I do with that? I really, really love to argue. What do I do with that? I really love to hit people. What do I do with that?” No, no, I don’t love hitting people. Of the things I mentioned, maybe I love some and not others. But you have lots of traits that make you feel you want to do certain things, and it’s a little confusing. You don’t know how to find the right balance. What do you do with all these ambitions you have? So just before Matan Torah, we went through a process. Today we’re on day... today is the—

11:58 Speaker 3 Forty-eighth.

11:58 Speaker 2 The forty-eighth day of... of working on our middos. No, no, it’s all right.

12:03 Speaker 3 All right?

12:04 Speaker 2 Yes. And that, really, is refining our character traits. We simply want to repair and renovate all our character traits. That’s it. Tomorrow evening we’ll refine our last character trait. On the eve of Shavuos, we refine the last one, and then what remains is the real thing. We come ready to receive the Torah, to take it in. It’s wonderful. Afterward, we need to process everything written in the Torah. And once we’ve processed it, we need to turn what we’ve taken in into what we put out. What does that mean? I’m no longer just taking things in; I’m bringing out what the Torah has placed within me. That’s life in practice. Because the Torah is our life and the length of our days. But the Torah isn’t just an instruction manual. It’s a way of life that changes our entire family life, our entire family life. When the Torah is at the center, when the Torah is at the center, our family is completely transformed. And yet, how can we be given rules, instructions, laws, and still love it? Are we sadists? We’re told what to do, and we love it? After all, a person knows what feels good to him, and people like to be free and happy. So where does this fit in? Why? Why do this to us? Why is the festival of the Giving of the Torah so meaningful to us? We’ll try to offer a few tips on how to change that way of looking at it. So we said the first thing you need is to be a little crazy. To get excited about something, you have to be a little crazy. When a soldier arrives at the army full of enthusiasm—not because they came and put him in handcuffs because he didn’t report on time, then classified him as absent without leave or a deserter, or a deserter and absent without leave, and then put him in military prison, leaving him no choice. So he serves, and he’ll do everything he

14:27 Speaker 2 can to prove he isn’t capable of doing anything. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about an ordinary young man who grew up in an environment that encouraged him to join the army. He saw the army as a place where he could contribute his abilities and skills. He saw it as an ideal, and he comes wanting to be a combat soldier and a commander, completely fired up. And what do they tell him? Don’t do this, don’t do that, stand in formation, salute—a whole lot of rules. He’s eighteen years old, and he’s excited. “How great! The commander told me not to do this and to do that.” Why does an eighteen-year-old suddenly like being told what to do? Where have we heard of such a thing? Where have we seen an eighteen-year-old who likes being told what to do? Not only does he like it, he gets excited about it. It even gives him strength and energy. It really gives him strength and energy. He says, “I can do whatever I set my mind to because they told me what to do.” Do you know why? Because he’s a little crazy; he has that spark of irrationality. To succeed in life, to have that sparkle in our eyes, we need to be a little crazy. It’s okay to say it. Look at yeshivah students who love where they are. It’s only because they’re a little—excuse me, I hope our students will forgive me—a little crazy. Without that, it doesn’t work. When someone comes to Eretz Yisroel knowing the British are there, and there’s... and still says, “How wonderful, I’m in the Land!” What do you mean, wonderful? They’re shooting at you from every direction. He’s a little crazy, a little fired up. Last week we held a very special evening at the place where I teach, and we invited the students to sign up for an evening of learning. They did it on their own time,

16:37 Speaker 2 and so did the teachers and rabbis who came. Nobody was paid overtime. We asked, “Who wants to come?” A hundred and forty-five teenagers came to learn Torah from seven until eleven—until ten. They could have done plenty of other things. They could have played computer games or studied for exams during exam season. They could have, but they came to learn Torah with enthusiasm, and in the middle of learning they suddenly started dancing. You say, “Wow, where do they get the energy?” They started dancing like crazy. Not crazy, exactly, but enthusiastically. And that’s the great secret. If we want to succeed in life, we need a sparkle in our eyes. That sparkle is a spark of irrationality, a spark of craziness, a spark of “I’m excited.” There’s no need to be embarrassed; we need to get excited. But sometimes that enthusiasm confuses us, and we take it to less positive places. That’s why we have to make sure we channel it precisely into holy irrationality, into the irrationality of holiness. When we channel that enthusiasm into holiness, we can change the world. We can turn the world around. But without that spark, without enthusiasm, without shining eyes, we can’t do anything. We can be good workers, excellent technocrats, just waiting for the paycheck to arrive at the end of the month. But there’s no satisfaction, no direction, no meaning. Is that the life we want? Certainly not. And beyond the question of what life we want, do we also want to pass that endless feeling of despair on to our children, our students, and our families? Certainly not. So we have no choice: we must turn the world around, and the Giving of the Torah is the occasion for it. Hakadosh Boruch Hu could have come and given us the Torah with a message: “Take note, this is the Torah. Follow it. Thank you, goodbye.” Instead, there were sounds and lightning and a cloud. Why all the

18:57 Speaker 2 spectacle? We come to receive the Torah with enthusiasm. We come to receive it with extraordinary spirit. But notice: unlike all the... unlike everything else that gets us excited, the Torah isn’t a party. The Torah is something serious. What brings us to receive the Torah, what makes us ready, is enthusiasm. But when we receive it, we’re already serious. “I am Hashem your G-d.” A still, small voice—everything is very serious now. You don’t touch the mountain: “Whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death.” You might think, “How lovely—it’s like a lulav, you can touch it; it’s all permitted.” No, no, no, no. Enthusiasm is excellent, but that’s where it ends. Now we’ve reached the real thing. The real thing is holy and special, and remember that you came to it with tremendous enthusiasm. But the thing itself is real. It isn’t just excitement; it isn’t just an atmosphere. They say that every few years in politics there are parties built on a mood, parties people join because of momentum. They have no substance, no substance. So these parties grow to twenty or thirty—I don’t know how many—seats, and as soon as the mood passes, the enthusiasm goes with it, and nothing remains. The Torah isn’t like that. In Torah there is enthusiasm, holy irrationality, and that spark helps us ready ourselves to receive the Torah with great enthusiasm. On the other hand, when we arrive at that moment, it suddenly becomes a serious moment, a moment with tremendous meaning. In our homes, we too experienced the moment of receiving the Torah and the Giving of the Torah: on the day we stood under the chuppah. And no matter how long that relationship has lasted, I wish everyone, with Hashem’s help, a long and happy life together. But that moment is a defining moment. On the other hand, it’s the most meaningful day

21:39 Speaker 2 In life, the most significant thing in life. So it’s also the most serious thing in life. Maybe, then, if it’s such a serious day, the wedding day should really have a somewhat different character. Let me suggest an idea. Maybe the wedding day should be a day of prayer. Many people fast, but perhaps it should be a day of prayer, maybe even of crying out to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, because I’m setting aside my own self-centeredness for the sake of a Divine command: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and cleave to his wife.” What self-sacrifice! To leave your own private world and live together with another person, with all the complexities that brings. Kabbolas ol, breaking yourself down, and so on. So on the face of it, it isn’t such a happy day. On the contrary, it’s also a serious day, because if you don’t do things properly, everything could fall apart. You might not live up to your commitments to your wife, to your home, to your children. Everything could fall apart. And it doesn’t depend only on me. It also depends on the person I married. That person also has to live up to their commitments, and if they don’t, everything will fall apart. And if everything falls apart, the children will fall apart too. There are many circles here, not just one. Wow. So what does any of that have to do with the steak we ordered and the orchestra playing so everyone will dance? And all those people dancing around the bride and groom and making faces? This is a very serious day. Why? Doesn’t it seem a little empty? A little confusing? We’re told it’s serious, serious, while everything going on around us is anything but serious. Anything but serious. And after the wedding, after we stand under the chuppah, we still don’t start life on a serious note. Every day of sheva brachos, we keep eating and celebrating and dancing. We keep up the atmosphere. Why? Because without it, it doesn’t work. Without holy

24:24 Speaker 2 foolishness, it doesn’t work. To erect the Mishkan, the holy place of the Jewish people, you need upright shittim wood. What is shittim wood? Shir Hashirim Rabbah, the Zohar, and Chassidus explain: holy foolishness. You need enthusiasm. Without it, you won’t build anything. For someone to build—I would say the Twin Towers, but they’re no longer there—the building at Ground Zero that went up in place of the Twin Towers, it took someone crazy. After two 107-story buildings had been brought down, someone came along and put up an even taller building. You might say, “What happened? Didn’t you see that didn’t work? Do something else.” You need enthusiasm; without it, it doesn’t work. Without it, it doesn’t work. But it has to be positive enthusiasm. So you bring something into that enthusiasm: people dance and dance and dance, and they celebrate sheva brachos. They bring blessings into all that dancing, and every evening they come, hear words of Torah, gain strength, set a direction, and say: “Friends, where is this going? Where is this home headed?” Right now you’re full of enthusiasm and beginning your life together. You’re starting to go to work, taking out a mortgage, and beginning to face the real challenges of the world. So why are we afraid when we raise children? “No, no, keep your serious composure, because you’re the father and he’s the child. He has to understand that everything here is serious.” It doesn’t work that way. Crawl around on the floor with him; laugh with him. Holy foolishness, the foolishness that belongs in education. And by leaping beyond the usual bounds, as it says, we increase love. That’s how we increase love, enthusiasm, and vitality. More than that: when we take those qualities of enthusiasm that we have—because everyone gets excited about something different—and channel them toward holiness, then that enthusiasm has already been spent. That energy has already been spent on good things, and I no longer have that thing pulling me aside, pulling me

26:51 Speaker 2 downward. And that brings us back to the passage of the sotah, the woman suspected of infidelity: “If a woman strays and commits a betrayal.” Why? What happened? What happened? She thought, “What difference does it make? Enthusiasm is enthusiasm. So today I’m excited about him. What difference does it make? Why should I only be excited about my husband?” Because that’s what keeps your home anchored. That’s what keeps the anchor in place: knowing that we have a path, that we have a direction. Are we the only ones with a direction? They have a direction too. Are we the only ones with values? They have values too. I’m not in a competition over values, but the Torah gives us anchors so we can bring our whole family safely to shore. And why did I speak about the Giving of the Torah and bring the example of the sotah? Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu places such great trust in the bond between husband and wife that He is willing to put His Name between them, and to have His Name erased to establish the woman’s faithfulness and the holiness between them. Part of the sotah procedure in the days of the Beis Hamikdash was to prepare a special drink and put into it the explicit Name of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, which would then be erased. Hakadosh Boruch Hu is willing to have His Name erased for the sake of peace. It’s like the story of Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes that we opened with: he told that woman to spit in his eyes just so she could have a home with her husband. He said, “If Hakadosh Boruch Hu has His Name erased, shouldn’t I set aside my honor to increase peace in the world?” Peace. Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu has nothing in His world but peace. And the entire Torah was given only for the sake of peace. Everything revolves around this peace. So what is this peace? What is this peace? On Shavuos, one of the special offerings we

29:09 Speaker 2 bring is the shelamim offering. The shelamim offering is meant to bring us to the wholeness that comes from this peace. Shalom is also one of the names of Hakadosh Boruch Hu. The kohanim bless His people Israel. What do they bless them with?

29:28 Speaker 4 Peace.

29:31 Speaker 2 With love. In the blessing they say, “Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us to bless His people Israel with love.” They say a blessing about love. What blessing do they give? “May Hashem bless you and guard you. May Hashem shine His face upon you and be gracious to you. May Hashem lift His face toward you and grant you peace.” Not love. So they say a blessing about love, and then they bless you with peace. Because that is love. Love is oneness; the numerical value of the Hebrew word for love is thirteen, like the word for “one.” And that is unity. Unity is peace. Without unity, there is no peace. Why were the kohanim the ones given the privilege of blessing His people Israel with love? They want to convey a blessing, so that means they have a special ability to bestow blessings. With that special ability, shouldn’t they simply turn to Hakadosh Boruch Hu and ask Him to bless the Jewish people? Why do they turn to Hakadosh Boruch Hu? Why do they turn to the congregation?

30:46 Speaker 4 Because they, too, are part of His people Israel.

30:48 Speaker 2 First of all, yes, they too are part of His people Israel. But why do they turn to the congregation? The Dubner Maggid gives a wonderful parable. He tells of a king whose son went astray, and the king threw him out of the house. The boy had nothing to wear and nothing to eat. The cold winter days came, and he turned to the neighbors, asking them for something to wear. A neighbor said, “I’ll go speak to your father.” He went and knocked on the king’s door. “Could you perhaps take care of your son? Give him a warm garment to wear?” The king said, “No problem, on one condition: you help me.” “What?” “I want to give him a warm garment to wear.” “I don’t understand. I’m telling you to give him something to wear, and you’re telling me to help you because you want to give him something? Are you joking?” The king said, “No. I’m his father. Do you think I don’t love my son? I love him very much. But out of my love for him, I had to bring him to his senses somehow. And for me to give him a warm garment, he has to come to his senses. I want to give him a warm garment more than he wants one, but he has to wake up. If you want him to have a warm garment, do something: influence him so that I can give him one.” The Dubner Maggid says: That’s exactly the idea. The kohanim come and awaken us, drawing down for us a thread of kindness so we can become fitting vessels for Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s blessing. Because Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants to bless His people Israel with love. And the kohanim, whose whole lives are devoted to peace and wholeness, do this. But why the kohanim specifically? Because the kohanim are the best example of taking a quality

32:48 Speaker 2 And turn it around and channel it to good places. They say the kohanim, by nature, might even have been murderers—that’s what the Gemara says. They might have been violent, because their inner makeup, their soul’s strengths, could have led them there. But that isn’t what those strengths were meant for. They were given those strengths to bring holiness to the Jewish people, to bless everyone, to slaughter the offerings in the Beis Hamikdash, and to perform the sacred service there. They had a role, and they took it and transformed it. Instead of using those strengths for negative things, they used them to build up the Jewish people, to bless His people Israel with love, to serve as the representatives of the Jewish people. They took that energy and directed it toward holiness. Blood, they say, symbolizes warmth. Instead of using that warmth to fight, they used it to make peace. That same warmth of the kohanim—instead of using it to quarrel, they used it to bring peace among the Jewish people, to offer the korbanos, the peace offerings and the burnt offerings, to bring the Jewish people into harmony with their Creator. What power! When you take a trait and turn it from bad to good with enthusiasm, you bring in love and peace, love and peace. And that’s what we need to do at home. That’s what we need to do at home. If we want our home to be a home where our children experience Torah as something formative, something holy and uplifting, rather than as a threat, we have to do every single thing we do in Torah and mitzvos with a smile from ear to ear. “Oh, I love bedikas chametz today. Bedikas chametz today!”

35:03 Speaker 5 You’re touching on a point there.

35:05 Speaker 2 Of course. What kind of question is that? Wow, wow, wow. We slept—no, we stayed up on Shavuos night, all night long. Wow. Why was that never frightening to me? Because my father said, “How wonderful! We have a whole night!” And we just waited for that night so we could stay up all night and go to the Kosel. Growing up in Jerusalem, there was no such thing as not going to the Kosel. I remember being five years old and dragging myself to the Kosel with aching feet: a three-hour walk there and a three-hour walk back, but with tremendous satisfaction. I did it because I understood it was a challenge. You like doing silly things? You like walking a lot? Well, there we went. You get there, and I remember the biggest challenge was staying on my feet at the Kosel and not collapsing during the very, very long davening. But that’s how we were raised. No one made a face and said, “Oh, we have to go to the Kosel.” They told us, “How wonderful—we get to go to the Kosel!” I remember my brothers getting up at four-thirty in the morning for Selichos in Elul. Not Ashkenazi Selichos—a few days, how shall I put it, that’s nothing compared to Selichos. Forgive me, yes, but I mean Selichos where you get up at four or four-thirty. It was so special to get there with enthusiasm. There was a competition over who got up earlier. You arrived there to tea with mint. It was wow. Who gets to help the gabbai prepare tea with mint for everyone? You get excited, and that excitement enters your soul. And if we don’t show enthusiasm because we’re tired from work, nobody cares. We’ll end up with a tired generation, a generation without love, a worn-out generation—but it has strengths. Someone else will probably kindle those strengths if you don’t. And our job—

37:01 Speaker 2 Our job is to draw on those strengths and kindle them at the right time and in the right place. That’s Shavuos. On Shavuos we received a gift. As they sing in kindergarten, Hashem gave us the Torah. The question is, what do we do with it? Do we receive the Torah with love and joy, or do we receive it as a burden? And even when there is a burden, the question is how you relate to it. A burden can be a good thing. Someone coming back from the bank after withdrawing all his earnings has quite a load in his hands, but he’s very happy. A burden isn’t necessarily negative. At a bar mitzvah, we say that the boy has entered the yoke of mitzvos. Today people are afraid to say “the yoke of mitzvos.” They say “the age of mitzvos,” “a mitzvah party,” “a mitzvah celebration.” But it’s a yoke. “If you walk in My statutes”—toiling in Torah. But do you know what it means to toil at something? I have several students, and I’ve just noticed a connection between their grades in Torah studies—and I imagine in other things too—and how much effort they put in. They make an effort in everything they do. One was a national champion in one field, another a champion in something else, and you see them learning: they’re precise. Why? Because they toil. You might say, “What, maybe Torah is too heavy for you?” If you don’t toil, nothing will come of it. If you learn Torah while you’re asleep, well, all right, but... You don’t love the Torah; it feels heavy to you, and that’s okay. But think about how you wake yourself up. Not to be critical now, but how do you—how do you bring in something powerful enough to wake yourself up? When a marriage gets worn down, sometimes the couple says, “All right, what do we do? Let’s go somewhere. We need to do something. Let’s talk. Let’s go for a—

39:16 Speaker 2 walk.” You have to do something to see why we’re tired, why our relationship is tired. It’s the same with learning Torah, and the same with davening. Don’t look at it with alarm: “Oh no, my husband doesn’t daven the way he should anymore.” All right, maybe he’s worn down. Let’s see why. What’s missing? Let’s see how we can get excited again. We need to talk about all of it. Don’t feel threatened; look at how we can bring it in. Because without love, without joy, without enthusiasm, without a bit of holy silliness, we’ll be left with nothing but a pleasant atmosphere, and we want our Torah to endure. One of the secrets to this is that remarkable saying. The Gemara in Megillah says: “If someone tells you, ‘I toiled and I found,’ believe him.” Think about that for a moment. “I toiled and I found.” I don’t know about you, but when I find things, it always happens suddenly, without my doing anything. I’m walking down the street and, boom, I come across a ten-shekel coin someone dropped. I found it. Did I tire myself out? No. Did I toil? Certainly not. So why does it say, “I toiled and I found—believe him”? It should say, “I toiled and acquired,” or “I toiled and received,” or “I toiled and understood.” But the one thing that has nothing to do with toil is finding something. You find it without doing anything. And that’s the great secret. The Torah is vast and expansive: “Turn it over and turn it over, for everything is in it.” But do you know how you can receive the Torah? Do you want to receive all of it? I don’t want to receive it in pieces: “All right, this week I’ll give you only chapter one, next week chapter two.” I want to receive the whole Torah. “Blessed are You, Hashem, Giver of the Torah”—the Torah, all of it. Do you know how I can receive all of it? Not by studying the entire Torah, because it would take me many, many years to study it all. Through toil. You toil.

41:33 Speaker 2 In Torah, you have to toil. You have to make an effort, value it, get excited about it. You walk into yeshivos and see them learning, and you say, “Tell me, what are you learning? It’s like a library—quiet, everyone writing.” That’s how you study subjects. If someone studies a subject, excellent. He can come and give a lecture on what he learned. That’s it. But someone who studies Torah, swaying in every direction and full of excitement, won’t just convey information in a class; he’ll convey Torah. Because when we toil, Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us a gift. Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us a treasure, a precious treasure kept in His treasury: His Torah. He gives us everything. The moment you get excited—“I toiled and I found”—then you’ll believe. It will strengthen your faith, because you aren’t receiving just a little. You’re receiving everything. You receive the whole Torah. This special place of the Giving of the Torah, and the Jewish home founded on Torah, lets us understand how a home works. A Jewish home works like Torah: the same principles, the same excitement required, the same commitments. We stand at Mount Sinai under that same commitment, with that same way of receiving love, that same way of bringing peace into the home. When we marry, we marry someone with an incredibly rich inner world. I can study my husband and see what he likes, little by little. Today I’ll learn one thing, tomorrow another, and the day after, something else. By the age of 120, you’ll know many of your husband’s qualities, but not all of them. On the other hand, when spouses invest in each other, when there’s excitement between them born of the desire to give, you can receive their entire spiritual, moral, and emotional world without having to study it and wait to learn one more thing and then another over the course of a hundred

44:05 Speaker 2 and twenty years. You receive it all at once. That’s how you bring it in, and that’s the parallel. That’s also why, at the Giving of the Torah, it says, “I will betroth you to Me forever.” We spoke about this last time. Why “betroth you”? We don’t want to be betrothed forever. Who wants to be engaged forever? We want to be married forever! Because during the engagement, we’re so sweet to each other. I remember calling my wife after we got engaged and asking, “Where do you want to live? How much do you want us to pay? What color?” Suddenly you ask about everything. Hakadosh Boruch Hu wants us to keep that feeling of being engaged to the Torah all our lives. To cherish it like a newly betrothed bride. To be excited, because without that kind of excitement, nothing holds together. Hands and feet. And that excitement gives us an anchor. I do want to end, perhaps, with a short story about a Jew named Yossele. Yossele was a thief who went into all sorts of places to steal. One day he went into a church to steal. There were lots of treasures there, but he was caught. The whole gang fled and left him alone. The priest came to him the day before his execution and said, “I’ll make you a deal. Convert, and you’ll live.” He had no Torah, no decency, no good deeds—nothing. Why should he care? But converting was too much. He said, “Kill me.” “What do you care? You don’t follow what the Torah says anyway. You steal. You don’t keep Shabbos. You don’t do anything.” He said, “This far and no further.” They killed him and buried him near the Shpoler Zeide. On his grave they wrote: “Here lies Yossele, a holy thief.” Later, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach took this story and changed it. He blended it a little with another story, about Yossele the Holy Miser. But his name wasn’t

46:23 Speaker 2 Yossele; it was Yisroel. And he wasn’t a holy miser; he was called a holy thief. But Rabbi Carlebach would always take people’s stories and adapt them so he could tell them in the first person. That’s how the stories came together. Still, he took part of the theme from there and from another story. But that was the Shpoler Zeide’s story about Yossele, the holy thief. Why? Where did it come from? When you know that you are a Jew by choice, with love and excitement, then even if you’ve drifted away, you still have that point inside you. Have you ever seen thieves walk into court and kiss the mezuzah? Not long ago they cracked down on some crime families, or whatever it was, and when they came in for their trial, they kissed the mezuzah. Because, in the end, that innermost essential point is alive and kicking. The Midrash says, “Go forth and see, daughters of Zion.” What does “Go forth and see, daughters of Zion” mean? Everyone knows “Go forth and see.” It speaks of the time when the Shechinah rested in the Mishkan. Daughters of Zion. Yes, if you want to see the Shechinah, you have to be capable of receiving the Shechinah. Not everyone can see the Shechinah. You have to be capable of receiving it. For Avraham Avinu to be able to see the Shechinah, he had to have a bris milah. It says, “From my flesh I behold G-d.” If you aren’t excited, if you don’t do what Hakadosh Boruch Hu asks with love, these things won’t last. Tonight we’re on the eve of the Giving of the Torah, and we know that whenever we... we want to leave these classes with something that will stay with us. And I say we need to take toil upon ourselves. What is toil? Once, my back hurt. I had jumped from a plane, and I hurt my back when I landed with the parachute. My back really hurt for several months. They sent me to physical therapy at Tel Hashomer. The physical therapist was very methodical, and the trainer told me, “Do

48:52 Speaker 2 this particular exercise. And how will you know when you’ve started working out? When it starts to hurt, you’ll know that’s when the workout begins. Do a little, but you have to feel that you’ve begun making an effort.” Because with some exercises you say, “This is nothing.” It’s as though you’re doing things without even feeling them. But then, at some point, you start to feel a little tired, some fatigue in your muscles. But once there’s pain, now the workout begins, now the workout begins. We owe this to our children, to our husbands, and to ourselves: to be excited, to invest effort, and to bring a great deal of love into our marriages, into Torah, and into our lives.