Q:
How can we understand אין כל חדש תחת השמש?
A:
They asked me this question when they put a man on the moon the first time. אין כל חדש תחת השמש.
The answer is, a man on the moon is nothing. What did he accomplish? A man is still a man. All the problems of a man in this world are exactly the same. A man is here to fight the Yetzer Hara. He’s here to serve Hashem. Whether he fights the Yetzer Hara by talking to people or by speaking on the radio to people, whatever it is, his job in this world is to spread the Torah.
When a man makes a mistake in listening to the Yetzer Hara, so what will it help that he’s on the moon? He’s a lost soul anyhow. All these inventions are meaningless. The process of life is only one thing. לעבוד ולעמוד בנסיון – to serve Hashem and to withstand all the tests, the ordeals successfully. That’s all that counts.
And the fact that today you have internet, other forms of Yetzer Hara, they’re all Yetzer Hara mostly. What will you accomplish with this yetzer? The old Yetzer Hara is also good enough to cause people to go to Gehenom. You need internet for Gehenom?
And therefore, nothing is new in this world. Nothing is new. That’s a very important principle. Shlomo HaMelech is teaching us that whatever we learned in the Torah about a man’s problems, you have to contend with the nachash, with his impulses, with his Yetzer Hara, is true in every generation, and no changes in inventions will make any difference in this process of choosing to live successfully in this world.
(Nov 1997)
