Jewish Inspiration Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

You're listening to Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe of TORCH in Houston, Texas. This is the Jewish Inspiration Podcast.

Now my dear friends, day number 130 on page 737 in the Treasure for Life edition of the Orchha Tzadik and the Ways of the Righteous. We're in middle of the gate of flattery. There are many as we left off yesterday. Yesterday's session was that the flatterer doesn't have to necessarily be a person who speaks words of flattery. Just becoming close friends with a rusher, with a wicked person, in itself is an act of flattery. Because you're sort of saying, I'm okay with you. Just the way you are. Because we don't associate with people we don't like. Clearly if you're associating, you like this person. But not only that, our Sages told us, you will be influenced by this person in a negative way. What are the dangers? He says, So echad b'pnei shu'oev son'o shel yotzer ha'kol. You love someone who is a hater of the Almighty? Ve'ein ha'eved ha'nei man la'adonav mischabe le'sono.
Ve'yesh mechsholim gedolim b'chibur u'shayim. A person has to be very careful. If a person is going to speak negatively about the country, you can imagine he doesn't really love it much. When you speak negatively about something, you don't love it. If you allow somebody else to speak negatively about your country, you don't either love it. It means you'd stand up. You're patriotic. What do you mean? What's the biggest argument you've ever seen? Sports. Right? People arguing about sports.
They're so passionate. My team, your team, my team, your team. If someone says something against your team, oh, what are you talking about? People get so defensive about their sports team. You just ask a Chicago Cubs fan right there, right? Lauren, right? The Chicago Cubs, they can do no wrong. They can do no wrong, right? It's like that's the way it is. And if you say something against them, they're out to get you, right? Because they feel their identity through it. It's almost like David, the Ole Miss, right?
It's your team. You make sure that you identify with it. What's about my identity with God? If someone speaks against God, I'm not, it's not my place. What do you mean it's not your place? If you feel close to God, it is your place. Again, but now we mentioned previously that we have a responsibility to only reprimand when reprimand will be accepted. To just reprimand when someone won't accept is a mitzvah not to say a word. And that's our obligation if we don't know.
So the question that people always ask, well, how do I know? How do I know if they're going to accept? Well, if you don't know them well enough, you definitely have no business saying anything. Just because you see someone doing something wrong, you should not be saying a word if you don't know if they're going to accept it. Because now harm is different. Someone who does something wicked is not necessarily harming themselves physically. We're not talking about someone running into the street.
We're talking about someone who does something that the Torah says don't do. Someone speaking in Lashon Hara, right? You walk over to them, you say, excuse me, you know, you're in Starbucks, you see people sitting and speaking slanderously about another person. Excuse me, don't you know, the Torah says not to speak like that. They're going to laugh at you in your face. And now you're the topic of their slander, right? So you didn't do anything good, anything positive.
And contrary, it's only going to get worse now because of that. So either way, so a person has to be very, very careful about that. Hasheni, shalom ha-mahasav, when you're hanging around someone who's no good, you're going to learn from their ways. It's inevitable you're going to learn from their ways. If you hang around good people, you will learn good things. You hang around bad people, you will learn bad things. That's the reality.
If you, you know, had a parent who came over to me and said, I don't know what to do. My son is dating a non-Jewish girl. I said, where is your son? He says she's in this and this university. I said, tell me, what's the Jewish population there? Like, less than one percent. Like, so why do you send them there? Why do you send your child there?
Why do you send, if they're in a non-Jewish environment, you expect them to find that other one other Jew on campus and fall in love with them and marry them? Like, you put them in a place, you didn't give them a choice even of finding someone, right? So if this was so important, why did you make this a focus? Why didn't you make this something which, which they wouldn't be in a trap of having no alternative, right? When you put someone in an environment, they're going to absorb the environment.
Ha-shlishi, what's the third? She-gam acher mischab ru'ito v'yaminu lo. Now that you're friends with this wicked person, people say, oh, if he can be friends with him, I can be friends with him. V'hu yigzol lo sam. And this person will take those people and rot their soul. V'gam heim yilmidum masav. And they will also learn from his bad deeds. V'afilu, because you gave him sort of a blanket, a cover.
Because if it's okay for you to hang with him, it's okay for me to hang out with him. V'afilu yim lo yilmidum imenu. Even if they don't learn from his ways. Heim roim imenu devarim she'osur lo hem lir osam. They will be accustomed to seeing things that they shouldn't see. V'gam hu lo yoshuv. And he himself won't repent. Ki im hoyu mochichim osor, v'hoyu nivdolim imenu, hoyu shov midarko harob. Because if you would have reprimanded him, he would have changed his ways.
You know, this is something that we talk about when we speak about Lashon Hara, the person who accepts the Lashon Hara. So someone wants to speak about their fellow man. So, you know, that guy, the guy, the guy, you know, you know, the guy over there with the cap, you know. He, I got to tell you something, I saw him do this and that. Right. So what's the appropriate response to that? I don't want to hear anything. Don't talk to me about another person.
I don't want to talk about another person. Right. You're telling me something negative or not. It's a biblical prohibition times 17. Don't tell me. But you know what's even worse? If we don't stop them. You say, really? Tell me more. Give me all the juice, spill the tea. Tell me. Right. So now what happens now, this person's encouraged because we just got them excited. We gave them the attention they wanted by speaking slander about another person.
What are they going to do now? They're going to go to somebody else and share that same thing. And they're going to go to somebody else and share the same thing. What happens before you know it? The whole town is talking about something, about a person negatively, and it can do terrible, terrible damage. Achaim va'amavis b'yad eloshon, says King Salman. Life and death are in the hands of the tongue. So what else happens? U'mi shemiz chad alorosh, or alosof arosh, or moshol olav.
We know that someone who connects with an evildoer, with a wicked person, at the end, they become wicked too. Ve'zeh ra'al kulam. And this is the worst. Ki kevon shuhu moshol olav, lo ye'nicheru lasos tov. Since now this wicked person is controlling him and guiding him, mentoring him, now he's not going to be able to do good. Haravi, another fourth evil that comes by befriending a wicked person. She'zeh tzorokh la'haniyach, mach mas yira lasos kama dvoram tovim.
He says because he's afraid that his new friend is going to see him do good things, he's going to have to hide it. So now he's going to hide the good things that he's going to do because he's afraid that he's going to be judged by his new wicked friend. And then what's going to be a result of that, he's going to end up not doing the things that he should be doing.
Lo'chein al yishaber adam elo im yirei shemayim, only become close with those who are righteous, with those who are good. Ki reishlokosh im mi, shehoyu medaber bashuk, hoyu ma'aminim lo zchora b'lo eidim. Ki hoyu yodim mevadai, keivan shehdiber imo bashuk, shehu neman, harei hachibur hevi kimo hanifos. This is an amazing thing. For if reishlokosh would speak with someone in the marketplace, people would trust that person and his merchandise without question, without witness. Because they knew that if reishlokosh spoke to him,
he must be trustworthy. If the righteous scholar reishlokosh spoke to the guy, it must be that this guy was top of the line because reishlokosh wouldn't waste his time with lowlifes. Reishlokosh wouldn't, with a scoundrel, with a cheat, reishlokosh wouldn't deal with. So it must be that if reishlokosh spoke, everybody would flock to the guy's business because they said, oh, this is a guy reishlokosh speaks to. It means your connection with another person gives them validation. That's what it does. Keivan shehdiber imo bashuk, shehu neman,
harei hachibur hevi kimo hanifos. So we see all forms of connection is also like flattery. Just by being friends with them, now you're flattering them by acknowledging their wickedness, by allowing them. So now this is again, we're referring, we're talking here when someone is an evildoer, someone who's an evildoer, we have to make a, we have to be careful not to make a statement, but just for the sake of making a statement, but we have to ensure that we are not
giving off a vibe or a message of validation. We cannot give a message of validation. So if validation would be that I'm friends with this guy, I can't do that. If validation would be that I hang out with the guy, I can't do that either. If validation would be that I, you know, do something jointly with this person, I have to avoid all inference of validation, of connection of validation. Hachamishi, the fifth thing of a flatterer. Ha'ish shehu ne'mon be'einei kol ha'am ve'kulam shomlo ve'hu ma'amid kirov o'liyos parnos,
o'liyos rav, ve'omer o'lav shehu chacham ve'eino kein, ve'chol ha'am somkham o'lav, al horo'osav al hanagosav, ve'khena omer al mi she'einu makiro shehu ne'mon. So people trust you. You're a trustworthy person. And you say about somebody, this guy is the best. You don't even know who he is. You don't even know if he is or isn't trustworthy. So now everybody's like, wow, you're using your personal weight to vouch for this person. It must be that it's trustworthy. And meanwhile, you don't even know that they are trustworthy.
So you're using your own personal value, your own personal trust, and putting it on another person when it's not appropriate. Ve'ah makpidim be'yado pikdonos, and then people trust the person, or people loan the person u'mekhakhesh. And then what happens, the person perhaps is not trustworthy. Ve'ameru chacham eni zoharon, ve'ahar, sages of blessed memory, sed kol ha'am ma'amid dayon she'einu ha'agun. Anybody who appoints an unqualified person to be a judge, ki'ilu nota asheru bi'yisro, it's as if they planted an asheru tree, a consecrated
idol-worshipping tree amongst the Jewish people. Why? Ve'amakum she'esh ta'amot chacham, ki'ilu nito etzal ha-mezbeach, and in a place where there is actually a righteous person, and if a Torah scholar is found in that place, it is as if he planted that same consecrated idol-worship tree in the, next to the altar. Ve'aset ha-kodesh boruch l'hipora mi ma'amid dav. And then ultimately Hashem will exact retribution from those who appointed such a person, such a person. The person has to be very careful about that. Ha'shishi, the sixth aspect of
the flatterer, mi she'esh piyod olim chos ve'einu mocha. Someone who is able to influence someone else by protesting, and he doesn't. Ve'einu no se'in leiv al maasei ha-chatoim, and they don't even look at the sins of another person. Ze ha-dover korv lo chanifos. This is also a form of chanifos, a flattery. Kei heim ha-chotim choshvim kei von she'einu mochin bi-yodeinu ve'einum me-kan tirim osanu kol maaseinu eim tovim. Sins! They're not reprimanding us. They're not protesting our deeds. It must be that we're doing this fine. You see, because they would
have said something otherwise. They would have told us we're doing something wrong, but they didn't. There's a mitzvah in the Torah. In Deuteronomy, the Torah tells us you shall completely remove the evil from your mitzvah. And our sages explained. Someone who could have told the members of his household and corrected them, he is held accountable for their mistakes. Same thing with the people of your town. If you're able to reprimand and you don't, then you're held accountable for that.
And if you have power and influence over the entire world, and you don't correct and protest the wrongdoing of others, you're held accountable. Which could be, by the way, connecting what we said in the beginning of class with Maduro, it could be that it is our president's responsibility when he sees evil around the world to call it out. You'd say it's not our fight, what do we care? Well, if you have influence, God says you have an obligation to protest. To protest that evil.
You can't say it's not my problem, not my country, leave me alone. If you have influence and power, you need to protest. Sages teach us that each and every Jew is responsible for one another. So if you see someone who does a sin, you see someone who does something wrong, you see someone who does something that is preventable if you just protest what it is that they're doing. Bring it to their attention, maybe you shouldn't be doing this, maybe it's not appropriate, maybe you're not doing the right
thing, maybe you're overlooking what it is that you're doing. You don't realize. And then a person could have saved themselves and saved those people because now the person thinks they just walked right by, they didn't say a thing. You know, the studies that they did in New York of people getting mugged and molested in the middle of the street and nobody says a word. He goes, what does that have to do with me? It's not my business. I just mind my own business,
keep my headphones on and walk straight, like make believe you didn't see anything. The person's screaming, help, help, help. Nobody says anything, nobody does anything. Kol Yisrael, our sages teach us, we're all responsible for one another. So at least if you can't reprimand someone because they're not going to accept, you can pray for them. You can do something to help hopefully from heaven that they be inspired. I remember one time, I'll end with this story for today. It was a woman who came over to me after one of our
classes and she said to me, you know, before you came to the class today, this so-and-so who was also in the class said something really, really, really nasty to me. Okay, meaning two people who were sitting in the class waiting for before I came to the classroom, one person said something really, really disgusting to the other. This lady comes to me and she says, what am I supposed to do? I don't want to come to the class anymore. This person said such a disgusting thing to me. What
am I supposed to do? I don't want to see them ever again. They embarrassed me. They hurt me. What am I supposed to say? Go reprimand them. The person doesn't want to listen. The person's a little arrogant. The person's full of themselves. They're not going to accept. I said, why don't you pray for them? Me? Me pray for them? They should come and beg me for forgiveness. She said, no, pray for the ignorance. Pray, look how silly their actions are. Look how infantile, infantile, how childish they're acting.
They're acting like such a child. Pray that Hashem give them insight to correct their ways. So the person said, okay, thank you. A week later, the person comes back to class and says, I want you to know that my life changed because of that. Because now I love that person. They gave me an opportunity for growth. They, by doing what they did, and now I pray for them. Now I actually hope to see them because I hope to see their improvement. I hope to see how they've been
influenced for the better. We need to know that we all have a special function in this world that Hashem wants us to accomplish in our lifetime. And we shouldn't be busy looking at others. We shouldn't be measuring our success based on others. We should be looking into ourselves and saying, what is the best you can bring to the world? Don't compare yourself to anybody else. You shouldn't care what the percentile is. You shouldn't care what others think. You should only
care about one thing. What is the absolute best that I can produce? Hashem gave me unique talents. Hashem gave each and every one of us unique talents, unique abilities. What is my calling? Because trying to copy others is not going to help us. Trying to compete with others is not going to help us. My calling is unique to me because otherwise Hashem doesn't need duplicates. Hashem wants each person to be their own unique self. And that's our mission.
If we are able to realize and recognize every single day our role, our place, I think the whole world will be a better place. My dear friends, have a terrific evening. What does it mean to be a great person? We say that a person should be an Adam Gadol. Zeh Hakatan Gadol Yihyeh. By every bris, eight days old, we say this little child will be a great child, a great person. Zeh Hakatan Gadol Yihyeh. He'll be a Godol. He'll be great. What
does it mean to be great? Our sages teach us something special. R.P. Shimon Shkup says, passed away in 1939, he said the most remarkable thing. He says, to be a great person, you need to make yourself big. Make yourself big. What does that mean? People think, oh, that means he's going to be arrogant. No. A small person only thinks about themselves. Do you know what happens? You get married. You have to start thinking about another person.
You have children. You have to start thinking about your children. You become a community leader. You have to start thinking about your community. You open up a business. You have to be considerate to your employees. You have to be concerned about them. Where their family, where their personal success, where their challenges are now yours. You feel them because you've broadened your world. You became someone who's greater than just your little me. As being a small person, you don't have many responsibilities. You don't have to,
just think about me. I know when I'm hungry. I know when I'm thirsty. I know when I'm tired. I know me. But to expand and become a big person, you start taking responsibility for other people. You have to now be selfless. You have to know when the person next to you is tired, when they need a drink, when they need, you have to be in tune to another person to become great. To become great means you're not just living for yourself. The little baby cares only about himself.
What happens at three o'clock in the morning when he's hungry? He doesn't care that everybody else is sleeping. He doesn't care that everybody's got a job to go to the next morning. All he cares about is, I'm hungry. Feed me now. I'll scream too. You pick me up and you feed me. That's very selfish, the most selfish creature, because it's only about him right now. A person becomes great, they start taking that responsibility beyond themselves. It goes their spouse and their
children and their community. But what's the God of Hador, the greatest sage of the Jewish people, which every generation has one? Their responsibility is for everybody. And they're concerned about the person who's 7,000 miles away that way and 20,000 miles the other way. It doesn't make a difference, the distance. They undertake the responsibility. That's why Rabbi Saul Salanter said, when a Jew in Poland observes the Shabbos, a Jew in France is enlightened. When a Jew in Russia prays, a Jew in New York has success in his business.
So we have a collective responsibility for one another because we're greater than just ourselves. How do we pray every single day? We don't pray in a singular. We pray in a plural, because we're not just praying for ourselves. We want to be someone who's great. So we don't just pray for myself. We pray beyond ourselves. We take responsibility for the community. That's our job. To be a gadol, to be someone who's big, we have to go beyond ourselves.
Our job is not to raise others. Our job is for us to become the greatest we can be. Rabbi Saul Salanter set out on a mission to change the world, on a mission to change the world. And then sadly, he realized, I can't change the world. I'm just going to be able to change my country. And then he realized he couldn't either change his country. He's just going to change his town. Then he realized he couldn't change his town. Maybe he'll just change his
little community, his neighborhood. Then he realized even his own neighborhood he couldn't have influence on, maybe just my family. And then he realized, even my family I can't influence, just myself. We start from ourselves and then it goes the other way. When we influence ourselves and we become a better person, that has an impact. I've seen it with my own eyes, how when we each and every one of us improve in our own unique way, it has an unbelievable
impact on everyone around us. When we decide that we're going to pray a certain way, when we decide that we're going to act in a certain way, that is better than the way we acted in the past, that we're courteous. You want to know something amazing? I tried this, I tested this out. I was in Israel. Israel is known for aggressive drivers. Now I'm coming from Texas. So we don't honk our horn, we're courteous. So I was a line of cars, everyone
is honking. And I'm like, I'm not honking, I'm not honking. This guy is trying to cut off here and this guy is trying to cut off here. You know what I did? You know what I did? I said, please, go ahead. Go ahead. You know what happened? A minute later, they let other cars go in and merge into them. Like, everyone's honking, my spot, I'm not letting you in. Suddenly, that act of kindness, I saw it in front of my eyes. I saw it unfold where others like, you know,
just come in, it's fine, it's fine. It's like, once people realize, why am I so small? What am I? I'm honking my horn for another two seconds. Another two seconds, it's fine. Another two seconds is fine. I've been, I can't even tell you how many times. I'm here at a red light, turning lights. And the car in front of me is busy, obviously, on their phone. And the light turns green. And I'm not gonna honk my horn. I don't care. I'm not gonna do it. Because I believe
that honking a horn is bankruptcy. I'm not gonna do it. And we missed the light. By the time they realized that the light was turning yellow, it was too late for them to go. And we had to wait a whole nother set of lights. And then make the left turn. It was worth it. It was worth it. Not to break Midos in a wrong way. Not to do, not to get angry. Not to get frustrated.
Not to go bankrupt of our Midos. Because I'll tell you, that guy who's so aggressive on the road is probably not a very pleasant husband. He's not patient. That guy who has no patience for anybody else on the road is probably not the best father. And that's what we want to work on ourselves to become, to be able to take things that don't go our way. It doesn't have to, you know what, it's fine. I'm not gonna honk my horn. It's fine. They must have a very important
thing that they're probably writing to their doctor on their chart about something that's going on in their file with their medicine. I don't know what it is. Who knows? People can be busy with a thousand things. I'm assuming they're not just scrolling on TikTok. But even if they are, so what? I have to get angry. I have to lose my composure. It's not worth it. All right. I hope I answered your question. It begins at home. That's the answer. Always. It always begins at home.

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