Jewish Inspiration Podcast · Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe

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

My dear friends, we resume with day number 129 on page 732 in the Way of Ways of the Righteous and the Orchis Siddiquim in the Treasure for Life edition on page 732. HaShlishi, the third aspect of Flattery, HaChanaf HaMeshabeach, Rosh HaBefanav, someone who flatters a wicked person in front of him. So imagine you're trying to get a promotion, you're trying to you're trying to lobby for a certain
position, you're lobbying for a certain government, you're lobbying for a certain purpose. So you go to the politicians and you start buttering them up with praises and whatever other way, not bribery of course, but whatever you try to do. But what's if there's someone who's really wicked and you go there and you just want to get their vote so you're gonna say anything in the world that comes to you so that you can praise them. That's Hanufa.
That's flattery. V'omar lo, you say in front of him. Kama ish nechmad v'adam tovu. He's such a good person. He's so pleasant. He's so wonderful. Af ki einu mesaber b'shivchor barabim shelo yia larabim lomokesh. Though he does not praise him before others so that this praise not prove a stumbling block to them, the transgression of such a flatterer gam ze achonof godol avono. Such a person is doing a grave sin and it's a very very serious thing. D'chisiv b'fe choneif yash chis re'eyu b'das tzadikim yicholaytzu.
The flatterer destroys his fellow men with his mouth but the righteous are delivered through knowledge. Ki kishi yishab cheno when you praise someone, yia min lo v'yachshuv shuv tov. This wicked person is gonna say, yeah, I believe him. I'm really a good guy. You hear what he says about me? I really am a good guy. V'yorum liba v'yizgash loy v'loy yashuv. So now he's gonna double down on his wickedness. And he's going to continue to act in the way that he's acting.
Ki kol mi she'ino tzadik kishi mishab chin oso yomar b'libo omnom yodati ki kein hu. He says whenever you have someone who's not righteous, when they hear their own praise, they're like, yeah, I'm kind of awesome. You know, when someone who's righteous, what do they say? No, I'm nothing. Why do they say I'm nothing? Why do they say I'm nothing? King David said I'm nothing. Why did he? He didn't know he was a king. He knew he was a king. He knew he was great.
So how can he say that he wasn't great? How can he say? He says relative to what I should be, not relative to others. You see, we always look with our eyes out. We say, well, compared to everybody else in this industry, I'm number one. I'm number one in sales. I'm number one in, right, in in retention of client retention. This is, this is compared to others. But maybe instead of doing reaching a 10, I could have reached a hundred. Yeah, everybody else is a six.
But why are you comparing yourself to others compared to your inside, what you're capable of? And here the Rasha, the wicked people, always take those praises that you give them. You say, yeah, everyone likes me. Everyone thinks I'm great. He says, yeah, indeed. So we see that he gets rotted because of the flattery of this person. Avur she omer abisayinu aleyim ha'shalom. Afilu kol ha'olam kulo omrem loch, omrem lochot tzadikato heyei be'nech hakoroshu. The Talmud says in Nida 30b,
it says, if the entire world tells you that you are righteous, be as a wicked man in your own eyes. Meaning, say, I know I could have done better. I still need, what does it mean to be wicked in your eyes? It means don't sit comfortably saying, I don't need to try harder. You always need to try harder. You always need to say, maybe I could have produced better. Maybe I could have done a better job.
And this is the reality of how life is. And what our sages hear, what the author here is telling us, is that the wicked always, they hear a compliment. They're like, you heard what he said? Yeah, that's me. That's me. I'm so great. But meanwhile, they know the flatterer is just flattering them. But it's not really truth. It's empty. Ve'omru im yesh lochorei im miktosim mishapchim moschom, miktosim miyashim mochichim moschah, ehov esam mochichim musnei esam mishapchim. Ki eile lecha eilema ba yeviyuchah, ve'eilel b'roschah yesamchuchah, ki yeshapchuchah.
Here, listen to what this Mishnah tells us. The Mishnah says, if you have groups of friends, some of them praise you and some of them criticize you. They reprimand you. He says, find those that reprimand you and get very close to them and love them because they will make you a good person. While the people who just pat you on the back and say, you're awesome, you're great, says that is going to destroy you because you're going to be so comfortable with and happy with your
accomplishments that you're not going to take an effort to improve. You're going to be comfortable with that. There's a story told in the Talmud. We studied this, I believe, in our Thinking Talmudist podcast, where one of the sages was, this is in Tractate Baruchot 6a, I believe, on the bottom. Talmud says that there's one of the great sages who had a very big collection of wine, really expensive wines, and they all became vinegar. They got spoiled and became vinegar.
An enormous sum, I think it was 300 barrels, 300 barrels, that's a lot of wine, 300 barrels. I don't know how many bottles you can fill with a barrel. It's a lot. And he had 300, maybe 3,000, maybe 3,000 barrels. Either way, so the sages came over to him, and the sages asked him, what did you do wrong? What did you do wrong? Why did God punish you? So, basically, what they were saying, he said, I didn't do anything.
So they said, you think God does things for no reason? So he started contemplating, he started investigating within himself, and then he figured out what he did wrong. And he did teshuva, and what happened? No, it didn't turn back into wine. It didn't turn back into wine. The price of vinegar went through the roof. And he made the same amount of money with the vinegar that he would have made with the wine. He did proper teshuva.
There's a story that's told about one of the great sages was sitting shiva once, and one of the rabbis came over to him and came to comfort him for his loss. His wife passed away, and he sits with him and he tells him, so, what did you do to deserve this, that your wife passed away? He says, ah, he says, you're the first person that actually came and cares about me. So everybody else says, oh, you're so righteous, you're so special, I can't believe you have such a,
he says, you're the first person saying, introspect, God doesn't do anything for no reason. There's a message here. A person needs to carry people around them that care about the message. What's the message? Don't only keep people who are your, that's why it's important for politicians, world leaders, to have a strategist or an advisor who has the opposing party's views so that you can learn how to deal with the opposition. Because you're going to be president, you'll be a governor,
you're dealing with another side who sees the world differently than you. If you don't have that perspective within the decisions that you're making, you're going to lose. You have to be able to understand the other side. Which is why, very interestingly, the Torah, what does the Torah tell us about a husband and wife, Adam and Eve? I'm going to make him a helper opposite him. She's not going to be walking with you, holding her arm around you saying, you're so good, you're so good, you're so good.
She's going to challenge you to improve you. Not to fight with you, to improve you. And that's our goal. Our goal in life is to figure out how to utilize those opposites that our spouse brings to the table as a blessing. It's not a fight, it's a blessing. A smooth mouth is here likened to a slippery road. What is that? An angel of Hashem thrusts them, let their way be dark and slippery. Chalak is slippery.
So he says here that just as a person falls and stumbles in walking upon a slippery road, so too if someone is walking in the path of someone who speaks so smoothly and so slippery and so sly in their compliments, be very careful. The verse, a very famous verse that we, it says let Hashem cut off all smooth lips, a tongue speaking great things. We talk about someone who talks very smoothly, someone who is, says all the right things, all the right times, makes everyone feel good.
I used to study with a politician, not going to mention names. And I've said this before here. I felt when I left his office, I needed to go into a mikvah because it was a disingenuine way that he dealt with everybody. Everything was fake. Everything was fake. I felt like I was all greasy with like all the oils of flattery, of just trying to kiss up to everybody. I just like, I don't know, I felt so uncomfortable. I felt like it wasn't truthful. I felt like it wasn't honest.
It wasn't proper. But that's the world of politics, right? He says cursed is a smooth mouth, which corrupts one's fellow man. And cursed is the hard tongue, the opposite of the smooth tongue, namely slander. So a person who speaks harshly about others is going to talk, is going to say slanderous things about another person. And there are those who flatter powerful men in order to be honored and elevated by them. So you want a better job. You want them to recognize you.
You want them to remember you. So you say all these, all these high things. As our sages taught us, the end of those who flatter their fellow man for the sake of honor is to depart from him in shame. At the end, you'll end with shame. Because when it's not truthful, when it's not honest, it's shame. And this is the danger of flattery. And now we go to part number four. I'm not going to say things that are flattery. I'm just going to be friends with them.
That in itself is an act of flattery. Being friends with him. He incurs the punishment of one who is a flatterer. It's not enough that he does not reprimand him, but now he brings him closer. So now he feels validated by the things, by the wicked things that he does. He is punished for this and incurs additional punishment for drawing him near. We know that the righteous despise the wicked.
Our sages of blessed memory said, not in vain did the starling go to the raven, but because it is of the same kind with it. The bird dwells with its kind and every man dwells with his kind. So if he's rotten and you're becoming friends with him, maybe you're rotten too. Maybe. Or you become rotten. As we mentioned previously, if he's wicked, if you're his neighbor, you're on the way to that as well. Why? Because it has an influence.
Before you know it, you become that evil. You become that wicked. He says, someone who gazes upon the face of King Judah. Were it not that I have regard for the presence of Yehoshaphat, the King of Judah, I would not look toward you, Yehoram, nor see you. Yehoshaphat, the King of Judah, I would not look toward you, Yehoram, nor see you. He says, someone who gazes upon an evildoer, a wicked person, his eyes become very weak. And it says that Yitzchak, we know that Yitzchak was blind.
Our Sages say, why was he blind? Because he looked at Esav, his son, who was wicked. Looking at it, right? Forget being friendly with them. Forget complimenting them. Forget flattering them. Even looking at someone who's wicked has an impact. We know that our eyes have tremendous power to influence us. Even if you don't know his ways, There are many difficult things that transpire upon a person, that come upon a person by his connection to the wicked.
And that we're going to see on day number 130. This concludes day number 129.

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