
לזכות יוסף ארי' בן שרה חי' וזוג' בלימא בת מרים וכל משפחתם להצלחה ולהרחבה גדולה בכל ענינים

לזכות יוסף ארי' בן שרה חי' וזוג' בלימא בת מרים וכל משפחתם להצלחה ולהרחבה גדולה בכל ענינים
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One Book, One Mind
Part I. Our One Book
Dancing With Your One Love
On Simchas Torah the minhag Yisroel is that we take all of the sifrei Torah out from the aron kodesh and we dance, we make hakafos. We’re celebrating the completion of another cycle of reading the Torah from beginning to end, and we’re starting now again from Bereishis bara Elokim.
Now, one of the features of this day, an aspect that is not spoken about often enough – is that we are dancing with only one sefer. The sefer Torah, that’s the only book we’re holding. And we do that because we’re emphasizing to ourselves and to our chaveirim that this was the plan of Hakadosh Baruch Hu from the beginning: The Am Yisroel should have only one sefer.
Now we’re accustomed already to seforim, to libraries of books, but the strict Torah law is that even divrei Torah are forbidden to write. Even to write a siddur of tefillah was ossur in the ancient times. The Gemara (Shabbos 115b) tells about a man who made siddurim and was selling them, so the chachomim went after him to prevent it. It was a strict Torah policy – no books except one.
It was only later in our history when the Chachomim saw that the Torah would be forgotten otherwise – there were wars and exiles and persecutions, and the generations became much weaker – so they permitted the writing of divrei Torah. And that’s how the Mishna and the Gemara and all other subsequent seforim came to be in writing. But in the olden days of the Tannaim and all the way back to Har Sinai there could be no such thing. In a Jewish home or even a beis medrash or yeshivah, you wouldn’t find any other book except the sefer Torah, the Tanach. We were a one-book nation.
Apion’s Accusation
Now to understand the very great importance of this principle, we have to go to somebody outside of the Torah world who explains it. That’s Josephus. Josephus lived at the time of Churban Bayis Sheini and he wrote a book called Contra Apion. Contra Apion means ‘Against Apion’. Apion was a Greek anti-Semite, and Josephus was defending the Jewish people against his lies and accusations.
Now Apion, among his accusations, he made a point of stating that the Greeks have a very big literature. “But you Jews, you backwards Jews,” he said, “you don’t have any books except the Bible.” In Josephus’s time, at the end of bayis sheini, the old prohibition was in full force. No books! And Apion ridiculed that.
Josephus’s Defense
But Josephus responded to that: “That’s no accusation!” he said. “That’s our salvation! Among us there’s only one book that’s permitted to be written. We have a Torah from Har Sinai and only a prophet, al pi Hashem, is allowed to write anything else. Nobody is privileged to take their own thoughts and put pen to paper, or feather to scroll.
And he explains what a very big difference that made. Pay attention to the very important contrast Josephus made. The Am Yisroel, he said, have just one set of ideals for the entire nation. Even if it occurs to somebody to be mechadesh something, he could say it, he could tell his friends or his family maybe, but to put it down in writing, to give it that gushpanka, the seal of the written word, was absolutely forbidden. It’s only the dvar Hashem that was in writing.
But among the Greeks, Josephus said, anybody who wishes can write. That’s the policy of the nations of the world; literature is open to anybody who could scribble. If you have the knack for writing – and even if you don’t – go ahead. Every Tom, Dick and Yenta writes a book. And so what do the books express? All the foolishness that enters their minds.
Now if the writers would have just kept their ideas in their own minds, that would be one thing; they would have misguided degraded minds. But the problem is the rest of the world, the readers. By verbalizing, by writing, they’re doing a very great harm to humanity.
The writers, the Greeks and those who followed in their footsteps, created a literature that harmed the intellect of mankind. The truth is that even their own philosophers say so. Plato, in one of his works, declares that the writers and the poets and the playwrights have corrupted the people. Every kind of mischievous idea was put into books and thereby into the minds of the people.
Police Brutality
Now, we could give here hundreds of examples, thousands, because the printing presses are operating twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. עֲשׂוֹת סְפָרִים הַרְבֵּה אֵין קֵץ – There’s no end to the mischievous ideas that are put into print, וְלַהַג הַרְבֵּה יְגִעַת בָּשָׂר – and the business with reading every person’s foolishness is wearying to mankind (Koheles 12:12). It’s the ruination of man.
I once spoke here about the book, Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. You never read it? You’re lucky. Unfortunately, I did. Now that book doesn’t have in it immorality so you’ll say “what’s so bad?” But it’s very bad because it’s a book full of fabrications, misconceptions, and in that sense it’s a wicked book too.
Hugo, after all, wanted to write a book with some punch to it. To write merely about the humdrum daily events of life, that’s not interesting enough. So he had to concoct a tale of somebody who suffered very great injustice over a long time. How a person in Paris was suffering the most abject poverty and finally he went into crime – you understand already; it wasn’t his fault he became a criminal, it was society’s fault. And finally he was arrested and he suffered in prison; ay yah yay, the poor criminals suffering in prison.
And of course when he came out, a whole story about how he wanted to avenge himself on society. Oh, but of course! It’s only fair that a criminal who was locked up should avenge himself on those who had to lock him up.
The whole story is a depiction of things that are actually not so, about the pitiful wretched lives of the poor and how they’re persecuted by the wicked police. It’s a style of writing, to magnify the small unhappy things that take place during life, to make the world seem more black, more miserable than it actually is. So all the ‘cultured’’ people who read Les Miserables become miserable and confused.
Dickens, Marx and False Reformers
The same is Dickens’ books and all the great reformers, the liars, who wanted to fight against social injustice. They always depict society not as it actually is. Lies, exaggerations, magnified problems, and of course fabricated and untenable solutions.
And so Karl Marx, that great rasha, because he was able to write books, he ‘mis’educated all the youth with lies, with ideas built on false premises. He taught people to admire only the proletariat, the workers, and to hate self-employed people. The capitalists who had shops and businesses of their own, anybody who was intelligent or active enough to set up his own business, was decried as an exploiter of the poor workmen.
And so his writings, especially the Communist Manifesto, created a tremendous falsehood, a cloud of lies, and it encouraged the Anarchists and the Socialists and the Bolsheviks and the Communists to rise up and overthrow the established governments.
Now the rabbanim warned! They said to the youth, “Forget about the ideas you’re reading about. Turn back to the Torah! Don’t organize a revolt against the Czar! What’s going to happen subsequently will be worse!” But the Jewish youth were misled by the false literature; they forgot that the foundation of our nation is one book. And so they read the Communist Manifesto and they read themselves straight into disaster. The last chapter of the book of real life wasn’t how Marx described it in his book. Nobody is happy in the Communist lands. Millions and millions are dead. Millions of people suffered and are still suffering because of dumbbells who wrote poisonous books.
Wasted Forests
Now, we could talk much more about the literature of the gentiles because it doesn’t end; every day trees are being chopped down to keep the printing presses going, to supply paper for books. Today especially there’s a new branch of literature corrupting the world. One of the mainstays of modern literature, which requires entire forests to keep it going, is romance.
Now when you look for the subject of romantic love in ancient literature you won’t find it. It didn’t exist because the whole thing doesn’t exist. There’s no such thing, It’s a dream, a fantasy. It’s לֹא הָיָה וְלֹא נִבְרָא. Romantic love as portrayed in the books is something that doesn’t exist in real life.
True Love and True Literature
Of course there’s such a thing as married love but it’s something that has to be fostered – it’s like a plant. You have to water it with a lot of patience, a lot of kindliness, one to the other – and yiras Shamayim helps a lot too – and as years pass by, it grows into a true plant, a true tree that has peiros, they give forth produce. Our Book says וְדָבַק בְּאִשְׁתּוֹ – a man must be loyal to his wife (Bereishis 2:24). Our Book says וַתְּהִי לוֹ לְאִשָּׁה וַיֶּאֱהָבֶהָ – And Rivkah became his wife and then, after he was married, he loved her (Bereishis 24:67). But it’s an entirely different thing from romantic love!
And so the world is being corrupted from every corner. The libraries and the newspapers and magazines are teaching the world about every type of falsehood. Romance, adventure, entertainment, psychology, pity on criminals, false history, immorality, all types of corrupt ideals. And so the world, as it becomes filled with more books, it’s filled with more filth. The stench grows and grows.
But we, the Am Yisroel, we are the stubborn ones. We have only one Book and from there comes everything, all of our attitudes. And on Simchas Torah, that’s an integral part of our happiness. We’re jumping up and down with our sefer Torah! This is our book! But not only that it’s ‘ours’ – it’s the only one as far as we’re concerned! We have only one great Book and this Book speaks about things that are worth talking about and it vocalizes the greatest aspirations of mankind.
Part II. Studying Our Book
“Let’s Get Practical”
Now, while we’re dancing with our one Book, with our one set of ideas, we need to make use of the opportunity. It’s not enough just to dance and be happy and sing. It’s a good beginning, but it’s not enough, because if we won’t make use of this Book that teaches us how to think and what to think, then what’s the use?
Imagine someone gives you an instruction manual for life and he tells you that this is the only book you’ll ever need. “Don’t bother looking elsewhere,” he says, “just in here.” So what will it help if you’ll dance with it? You have to open it and study it too.
So that’s what we’ll do. If we’re beginning the new cycle of reading from our nation’s sefer, so the first thing we should do is practice up making use of it. We’re a very open-minded people; all the ideals and attitudes and lessons in our book we want to open our minds to them, and so we’ll take Parshas Bereishis and we’ll practice. We are reading Bereishis now and so we’ll study our subject with a few examples from this sedrah.
Now, I have upstairs in my notes a list of at least twenty-five attitudes that we learn just from Parshas Bereishis – I say ‘list’; it’s more than that. Each one has many details. Just at random I’ll pick some of them, just so you’ll see what it means to think along with the Torah, to get the hang of it.
Seeing His Word
When you look only in the Toras Hashem, what’s the first thing you see? בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹקִים. It means that once there was nothing. Not that there was something and it became a world; not that there were atoms or molecules or even space – there was nothing, nothing at all. And then בִּדְבַר ה’ שָׁמַיִם נַעֲשׂוּ – by His word the universe was brought into existence, וּבְרוּחַ פִּיו כָּל צְבָאָם – and by what came out of his mouth all the hosts of Heaven, everything, were created (Tehillim 33:6). That’s what Bereishis bara Elokim means.
Now, that’s a revolution in the way a Torah Jew looks at the world. Because it means there is no world! It’s only imagination. Whose imagination? Hashem’s Imagination! There’s no sky. There’s no earth. Wherever you look, it’s only the Word of Hashem.
That’s how the Torah teaches us to see the world. לְעוֹלָם ה’ דְּבָרְךָ נִצָּב בַּשָּׁמָיִם – Forever, Hashem, Your words stand in the skies (ibid. 119:89). If you look at the sky, don’t think it’s a sky – it’s the Word of Hashem that you’re seeing only that it took a form and shape like a sky.
Hashem said, “Yehi!” and His word became clothed with sky, with the sun and stars and planets. He said “Yehi,” and it became earth. It became air and trees and rabbits and cats and roses and rain. His word became oceans and fish and whales. His word became everything in the universe.
Now, those who don’t look only in the Torah, they look at the world through the newspaper’s eyes or through the eyes of books, so to them there are cats and monkeys. There’s a sky and an earth. There’s a Big Bang and other foolish ideas. But they’re living a lie! Everything they see is wrong because they took their eyes out of the only book that matters.
It’s All Good
Another example. What else does the Torah say about creation? Yes, it’s all Hashem’s Imagination; that’s already a revolution in how we look at the world but there’s more yet: וַיַּרְא אֱלֹקִים אֶת כָּל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד – Hashem looked at His creation and he gave His psak: It’s a very good world (Bereishis 1:31). You know what it means a psak of Hashem? You don’t have to think maybe a different dayan, a different book, maybe he’ll say differently. Oh no. The psak of Hashem is final; it’s the only truth. And what does He say? וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד – It’s all good. Not just good. Tov me’od – very good.
You hear that? Wake up children! Don’t listen to liars, to complainers. You’ll listen to Victor Hugo and you’ll get the idea that things are miserable. Marx tells you it’s a miserable world. The newspapers, bad news all the time.
Hebrew Poetry
Listen to the poets and they say the same thing. I once told you about a Hebrew poet who wanted to make a poem. So it was raining on the window, and as the rain was hitting the window, he said, הַגֶּשֶׁם מַאי קָא מַשְׁמַע לָן. It means, ‘What does the rain teach us?’
Now if he would listen to Bereishis, to the real Poet, so he would know that the rain teaches us the kindness of Hashem. Of course, it’s not only rain. אֶת כָּל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה means everything that He made is good – but it’s a good time of the year now – soon we’ll be saying the tefillas hageshem – to use the example of rain. The Torah teaches us that the Creator is a tov u’maitiv, that Creation is very good. Every drop of rain is a pearl! It’s chiyus! It’s life! Water is life!
But this ‘chochom’ poet looked in other places. He was a connoisseur of Hebrew literature, of Hebrew newspapers and so what did he say? טִיפ טִיפ עַל חַלּוֹתֵנוּ – “Drip, drop on our window panes, כִּי אִישׁ בְּבֶכִי מְמָרֵר – like a man weeping bitterly.” That’s what this meshugener saw in the rain. Raindrops are pattering on the window, so he says, “It’s sadness. It’s like weeping tears of sadness falling on the window pane.” So if you read poetry you learn that rain is sadness. And don’t say “it’s just art, it doesn’t have an effect”; absolutely it does. It’s impossible that it shouldn’t.
Hashem’s Weather Report
People, frum people, read the papers their minds are corrupted with ‘nasty weather’, ‘bad weather’ and if they read the college books so the reader becomes corrupted with all the words meant to hide the Borei: the hydrologic cycle and evapotranspiration, the orographic lift, whatever it is, to pollute the mind by hiding the Borei and the tov me’od of the Borei.
And so Hakadosh Baruch Hu says, “One sefer! Take My sefer and think along with Me. וַיַּרְא אֱלֹקִים אֶת כָּל אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וְהִנֵּה טוֹב מְאֹד! Hashem said “It’s tov me’od.” He didn’t have to say it but מַה הוּא אַף אַתָּה – if He said it, then it’s a model for what we have to do all our lives. We also should say “Tov me’od!” All of mankind – at least the nation of One Book – chimes in and says “Tov me’od!” Ah! It’s a beautiful thing when it rains. And it’s beautiful when it doesn’t rain. It’s beautiful when the wind blows and when it doesn’t. Summer and winter; it’s all tov me’od!
Making Man Great Again
Now, number three. Our third example – just in this sedrah – is the following possuk: וַיִּבְרָא אֱלֹקִים אֶת הָאָדָם בְּצַלְמוֹ – Hashem created man in His image (ibid. 1:27). A thunderous declaration! Man is made in the image of Hashem!
It means that when you look with Torah eyes, so when I look at you, I don’t see just a heap of chemicals. That’s how a reader of books sees you – that’s what you are; you’re a certain amount of nitrogen, a certain amount of calcium, a certain amount of carbon, a certain amount of oxygen, hydrogen, other elements. If you take all these elements and separate them and try to sell them to a drugstore man, he might give you five cents for it or ten cents for it. Is that what a person is?
No! בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹקִים בָּרָא אֹתוֹ – Man was created in the image of G-d (ibid.). Ooh wah! So now I know how to look at you. When we look at you, we see tzelem Elokim! That’s what your face is, a mirror of Hashem! Your face is a tzelem, a reflection of the Glory of the Creator! Every face that you look at – you’re talking about a good face, a decent face, a frum face, don’t think you’re looking at Mr. Rubin or Chaim or Mr. Greenberg or Dovid, you’re looking at greatness.
You Say Small, We Say Big
Do you know what an opposition there is to the greatness of man? Millions are writing today and preaching today that man is nothing but an accident! That once upon a time, he was nothing but a germ floating in a mud puddle. Now that’s insanity of insanities; it’s the silliest of theories to even dream that this could have happened by accident. Nevertheless, anything goes in the battle against the truth of the Torah and therefore, the libraries are jammed with books. Every day the book presses are publishing new books, big expensive books with expensive pictures and charts and the entire public are being corrupted against the idea of gadlus ha’adam, the greatness of man.
The truth is we have more appreciation of goyim than the goyim have of themselves. We say the goyim are tzelem Elokim and they say they’re frogs, they’re baboons. They’re trying their best to become frogs but we continue to shout “No! You’re tzelem Elokim! That’s what our sefer says! We won’t listen to what you say, that you’re frogs. You’re tzelem Elokim!” And only by Torah can we learn this. If you look in other places, it’ll reduce the greatness of man. It’ll minimize him and finally you won’t realize it at all!
But we have the instruction manual! The Torah is given to us that we should know the great truths. We know b’tzelem Elokim bara oso! We know Bereishis bara Elokim! We know vi’hinei tov me’od!
And we know why Hakadosh Baruch Hu insisted on only one sefer. Only the Torah, because it’s an entirely different way of looking at the world. Instead of seeing the world through the eyes of Victor Hugo and Karl Marx and all the writers, all the science books and newspapers, we look at the world through the eyes of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
Part III. No Outside Books
The Torah of Seeds
A few more examples from Parshas Bereishis. Number four: Hakadosh Baruch Hu told Adam Harishon הִנֵּה נָתַתִּי לָכֶם – “Behold I have given you food” (Bereishis 1:29). Hashem was introducing mankind for the first time to the idea of eating and He says, עֵשֶׂב זוֹרֵעַ זֶרַע … וְאֶת כָּל הָעֵץ אֲשֶׁר בּוֹ פְרִי עֵץ זֹרֵעַ זָרַע – “I’m giving you herbage that produces seeds and fruit that have seeds in them” (ibid.)
So there are superfluous words there. Hashem says “I have given you food to eat, yes, but why mention זֹרֵעַ זָרַע, that it has seeds in it? At Creation when Hashem said תּוֹצִא הָאָרֶץ… עֵץ פְּרִי … אֲשֶׁר זַרְעוֹ בּוֹ – “The earth should produce trees with seeds in it” (ibid. 1:11), so we understand why it was necessary to say it then. That was the command of Creation and He wanted that fruits should have the ability to continue to reproduce forever. But here, He’s telling Adam to eat – was it necessary to mention that there are seeds in the fruit?
The answer is this. The Torah is telling us how to eat fruit. When an adam eats, he has to think about the seeds. Not only the pulp and the juice is beneficial to you, but your mind is going to gain a great benefit from looking at the seeds.
Our Book and the Orange
It means that our Book tells us how to eat an orange. While you’re chewing you’re thinking, אֲשֶׁר זַרְעוֹ בּוֹ – every fruit of the tree and every fruit of the ground, all have seeds inside of them.
“So what about it?” you say.
What about it?! How did it happen? Let’s say you found a quarter inside a watermelon, you’d be very happy, wouldn’t you? How did a quarter get in?! A miracle!
But a quarter is nothing. A quarter is a dead thing. It has some information on it; a few pictures, a date, some words but it’s nothing compared to a seed. An orange seed has millions and millions of bits of information inscribed on the helix of the DNA molecule. And it’s a live thing. Not only the information it has but also all the machinery to make a new orange tree.
Their Book and the Orange
That’s what our Book says about eating an orange. Now let’s listen to what the other books say. The Department of Agriculture in Washington once published an article and the author was marveling at the fact that an orange pip is bitter; by some chance, over millions of years, he wrote there, in ways not yet understood by us, somehow, the orange seed developed a bitter taste – in order to discourage people from eating it, it became bitter.
You hear that? It happened by chance. What our Book tells us to look at and marvel at the Hand of the Creator, the books of the world say we should marvel at “natural selection”. ‘In ways not yet understood by us’!
But our book tells us! We do understand. It was בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא !אֱלוֹקִים Elokim did it! And it’s טוֹב מְאֹד, it’s for our good! And because we’re tzelem Elokim it was done for us, so that we should study the fruit and become greater and greater, bigger and bigger maaminim. So as you’re in the street and you’re passing a fruit stand, you’re thinking, אֲשֶׁר זַרְעוֹ בּוֹ! Apples! אֲשֶׁר זַרְעוֹ בּוֹ! Watermelons! אֲשֶׁר זַרְעוֹ בּוֹ Cantaloupes! אֲשֶׁר זַרְעוֹ בּוֹ! That’s a person living with his one sefer, his one instruction manual.
The Permissive World
Number five and it will be our last example for tonight. Of course, I wish we can stay all night and learn many more lessons, but you’ll have to forgive me for ending here. The fifth example of a Torah teaching found in Bereishis, is what a cheit really means. You know, the literature of the outside world is busy today teaching the principle of irresponsibility, of excuses. Nobody is responsible for his misdeeds. They have stories, alibis. It was poverty. It was racism, underprivileged, the government. And the psychiatrists, in their books, have created new excuses now.
So along comes the Torah and says, forget about all that! וּלְאָדָם אָמַר – And Hashem said to Adam … because you ate from the tree that I told you to not to eat from … אֲרוּרָה הָאֲדָמָה בַּעֲבוּרֶךָ – the earth will be cursed forever because of you … בְּזֵעַת אַפֶּיךָ תֹּאכַל לֶחֶם – and only by the sweat of your brow will you eat food (ibid. 3: 17-19).
One Little Sin
Now, Adam didn’t live a lifetime of sin. He was a virtuous man. He didn’t murder. He didn’t rob anyone. Only that one time he transgressed and ate what was forbidden. One time; one sin, that’s all!
And now, forever and ever, that one time brought upon the world a darkness, a sadness, a curse that would act as a memorial forever and ever until the end of history. If you see Italian men on the street, men with big muscles who are digging holes in the asphalt; they’re laying pipes and there’s sweat pouring from their faces, so we are reminded of the results of cheit. Forever and ever, only with sweat will mankind be able to eat!
A melamed is standing over a class of wild boys trying to maintain order and knock some aleph beis or chumash into their heads. It’s almost impossible; he’s frustrated. But he has to come back tomorrow anyhow because he must feed his family. That’s what a cheit really means. It’s all because once a person transgressed the word of Hashem. You can call it a sentence, a punishment, whatever word suits you but it’s all because once a person transgressed the word of Hashem.
One Very Big Sin
And the lesson is that a sin is not merely an error that can be blamed on something else; it’s not a minor disturbance in a man’s life that can be overlooked or ignored. That’s what the literature of the world would want you to think. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s just a sin.’ There’s no such thing as, “OK, so I ate something I shouldn’t have. What’s the big deal?”
“Oh no,” our Torah says. “A sin is the biggest of deals!” It’s like the danger of falling off a roof. Even one fall is too much. You know, you can’t say: “Well, I only fell off the roof once.” If a man would smash his head, he wouldn’t say, “Oops.” If he broke his spine, he wouldn’t say “Oops.”
And a cheit is worse than falling off a roof. It’s an earthquake, a major tragedy in the history of the world.” That’s how we understand a sin because our Book says that we don’t look at the ‘smallness’ of the sin, a little act that took perhaps a few seconds to commit. We look at the greatness of the One whose words you are transgressing! Hakadosh Baruch Hu fills the universe with his glory, a greatness that is endless; it stretches into remote space without an end, which means you transgressed a command of One who is infinite and whose words are eternally perfect. Our book tells us that no sin is small, it’s a transgression of the Will of Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
Take It and Run With It
Now, I chose tonight a few examples from Bereishis at random, and truthfully I wish we could continue because there’s so much more. But what can I do? I don’t get paid for overtime and anyhow we have to daven Maariv. So we’ll conclude by reminding ourselves that these examples are intended only as samples of what it means to have a book, a sefer, that teaches you how to think, how to live successfully. And successfully means in both worlds; a person who knows that he has one book that teaches him everything, that person will live happily in this world and in the Next World forever and ever.
But it’s only on one condition. Sefer Echad! הַקּוֹרֵא בִּסְפָרִים חִיצוֹנִיִּים אֵין לוֹ חֵלֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא – If you read seforim chitzoniyim, outside books, you have no share in the World To Come (Sanhedrin 100b). Now, exactly what’s meant by seforim chitzoniyim, there are different opinions; I’m not going to go into it, but the general rule is that anything outside of Torah seforim takes a man away from eligibility for Olam Haba.
And why is that? Because Olam Haba is a place where people go because of one thing – because of what’s in their neshamah; the kind of neshamah a man has decides whether he’s going to be in Olam Haba or not, or where he’s going to be in Olam Haba. And what enters the neshamah enters by means of passageways of the ears and the eyes; what you hear and what you see, that creates the content of the neshamah.
Looking Toward the Future
And therefore, if you get accustomed to looking in their books, the ideas enter your mind, and even though you’re frum you have the opposite of Torah in your head. Or a chulent you have; a chulent of ideas, some rotten, some good, and everything becomes spoiled. Today there are even some Orthodox Jews who believe in evolution. And so, these corrupted people, אֵין לָהֶם חֵלֶק לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא – you can’t come to the next world with a neshamah full of the opposite of Torah.
That’s why we say one Book and that’s all. Even if you read a frum Jewish newspaper or a frum magazine it’s a big sakanah because who says the writers are telling you what the gedolei Yisroel, the Torah leaders, say? They’re frum young men who are writing, but who knows what kind of harm they might do to you by putting into your head things that will go with you to the Next World? People must know that the more ‘outside’ reading they do, the more they’re ruining their entire outlook on the world and they’re poisoning their minds for nitzchiyus. It’s only the Torah that teaches us to see the truth.
And so let’s go back, as much as possible, to the good old days when there was one sefer and we’ll see how to look at the world through the eyes of that one sefer. That’s a good thing to think about when you’re dancing on Simchas Torah. We’re dancing with only one sefer because there’s nobody else that can tell us anything. מֹשֶׁה אֱמֶת וְתוֹרָתוֹ אֱמֶת! This is the only truth! Outside of that one book, you’ll look through the eyes of writers and you’ll get a crippled picture of the universe. Just the Toras Hashem, that’s our one source of information. That’s the happiness of the day!
Have a Good Yom Tov and a Wonderful Shabbos Bereishis
This week’s booklet is based on tapes:
2 – The Refutation is at Hand | 431 – Your Words Make You | 483 – Man Needs Three Blessings | 607 – Cultivating the Middos | 660 – One Book, One People
Enjoying Fruit
Anshel Holtzbacher walked out of Kever Rabbi Meir Baal Haneis with his son Ari. It was so great to be visiting Eretz Yisroel and getting to daven by so many kivrei tzadikim.
Just then Anshel Holtzbacher’s cell phone rang.
“Hello?” he said, answering the phone. “What? Did you say Glatt Inc. wants to back out of the deal? Oh my, that’s terrible! Thank you so much for letting me know!”
Anshel Holtzbacher looked worried as he hung up the phone and quickly dialed the Horki Rebbe’s gabbai.
“Is everything okay, Totty?” asked Ari.
“I hope so,” his father replied nervously. “Hello? Yes, I need to speak with the Rebbe immediately!”
“I’m sorry,” came the voice of the gabbai on the other end. “The Rebbe is currently unreachable. He doesn’t want anyone to know where he is.”
“But this is an emergency!” Anshel Holtzbacher pleaded. “I just got a call that a 50 million dollar business deal I’ve been working on is about to fall apart and I need a brocha from the Rebbe right away!”
“Oh, it’s you, Reb Anshel? I didn’t recognize the Israeli number” the gabbai replied. “I’ll tell you where he is, but I don’t know how you’ll be able to reach him. The Rebbe is by Nachal Amud, just outside of the Kibbutz of Ginosar.”
“Ginosar? That’s only fifteen minutes away from me! Thank you so much!”
Anshel Holtzbacher quickly hung up the phone, as he and Ari jumped into their rental car and hurried to meet the Rebbe.
The Holtzbachers reached the Nachal Amud stream which led down to the Kinneret just outside the Ginosar Kibbutz and immediately heard the Rebbe’s singing in the distance. Following the sound of his voice, they passed beautiful fruit trees and arrived to see the Rebbe next to a basket of fruit, holding a half-eaten pear in his hand and dancing and singing as he ate.
Ari and his father watched in confusion for a minute. When the Rebbe finished singing his song, he noticed his audience.
“Reb Anshel! What a surprise! How nice to see you here! And how are you, Ari?”
“Boruch Hashem, I’m doing very well,” Ari replied respectfully. “But can I ask why the Rebbe is singing and dancing with all of this fruit?”
“Ah, I’m doing what Hashem commanded Adam Harishon to do in this week’s Parsha,” the Rebbe answered warmly.
“But Hashem told Adam not to eat fruit – from the Eitz Hadaas! I don’t remember Him specifically saying to eat fruit.”
“But He did! Right before he told Adam not to eat from the Eitz Hadaas, Hashem said “מִכָּל עֵץ-הַגָּן אָכֹל תֹּאכֵל” – that he should eat from all of the trees of Gan Eiden.”
“I thought Hashem was just saying that he’s allowed to – not that it was a Mitzvah.”
“Ah but listen to this story from the Gemara in Brachos: Rabbi Yochanan and Reish Lakish used to take trips to Ginosar – right around here – and they would come and eat the delicious fruit that grows here. And they would enjoy the fruit so much that they would go wild with excitement over the incredible treats that Hashem put here in this world for us to enjoy”
The Rebbe bent down and picked up an orange from the basket at his feet.
“Look here,” the Rebbe said, handing the orange to Ari. “Hashem put an amazing plastic cover on this orange to keep it fresh and juicy. And He went even further to make the plastic cover a beautiful delicious-looking orange color – just the color makes it even tastier to us. But of course you know that the beautiful color is only on the outside – the inside of the orange peel is white, because we don’t see that part when it’s on the tree.
“And then, inside are little seeds, which are factories that, when put in the ground, produce an entire tree which makes even more oranges! But unlike the fruit, which is deliciously sweet, Hashem made the seeds sour so people and animals don’t eat them – this way they get dropped on the ground so that more orange trees will grow!
“Hashem wants us to enjoy the delicious fruit that He put here in this world, so he told us: ‘You are my guests in this world – eat! Enjoy yourselves!’ And when we consume the delicious fruit that Hashem put here for our enjoyment – if we do it properly – we gain even more awareness of Hashem’s wonderful chessed, and thereby come closer to him.
“So come, Anshel, Ari, take some fruit, make a brocha, and join me in singing and dancing our thanks to the Borei Olam.”
The Rebbe paused before adding “Oh, and Anshel, Hashem will bentch you with brocha and hatzlocha, everything will be smooth and glatt – there is no need to worry about anything.”
Have A Wonderful Shabbos!
Let’s Review:
- Is there a mitzvah to eat fruit?
- What should we think about when we eat fruit?