Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parsha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well. Before we begin this week's episode, I just want to let everyone know that today was my birthday, and actually it was my Hebrew birthday. You know, the Jewish calendar goes after the lunar year. The Gregorian calendar goes with the sun, that the earth going around the sun. But in Judaism, we go with the moon going around the earth, and every 30 days, a new month. So today, Yutes of was my Hebrew birthday.
[00:00:40] 37 years old. I'm still young, but there is actually a custom, and my mother's very into this, that on your Hebrew birthday, you. You have a, uh, special power to give blessings, to give a bracha.
[00:00:56] And before we start this week's episode, I wanted to give everyone a bracha, all my listeners, all the listeners to the Practical Parasha podcast, that you should have success spiritually, physically, financially, mentally, everything. Success in all endeavors, that each and every one of you should fulfill your potential.
[00:01:22] That means on the physical sides, we, uh, should fulfill our potential. Whatever we're supposed to get to on the spiritual side, that's the first. That's more important. The spiritually, we should get to where we need to get to. And also physically, in the material side, we should reach our potential as well.
[00:01:40] And my bracha is we should continue to increase this podcast. It should continue to grow.
[00:01:48] And, um, I thank each and every one of you for listening. And again, as always, if you have any questions, comments, would like to wish me a happy birthday, please feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomokon kohnmail.com I'd love to hear from you. This week's parsha is Parshas Eikev. So it's my bar mitzvah, Parsha, and maybe this Shabbos and shul. I'll lay in an aliyah or two to keep my, um, laning skills fresh. I don't know if you want to hear me do it now, but just to give a quick overview of the parsha, these parshios, the Torah portion of these weeks, is this message from Moshe Rabbeinu, this message of strength that Moshe is giving to the Jewish nation.
[00:02:37] He's also giving them musr. He's correcting them where they need to be corrected and reminding them of where the pitfalls might come, where certain issues might come up, how to protect themselves from that. Just to give a quick overview of specifically Parshas Eikev. Parshas Eikev talks about the great reward that waits for the Jewish nation when they fulfill the will of Hashem.
[00:03:03] And that includes this small mitzvos.
[00:03:07] And Hashem, through Moshe Rabbeinu, um, he gives assurances to the Jewish nation that everything will be good if we do what we're supposed to do. If we follow the Torah, we do the mitzvos.
[00:03:18] And the Parsha continues with specifically a warning about prosperity, to be careful that when we enter the land of Israel, the land's a blessed land, and the economy is going to boom.
[00:03:30] And it's natural for a person that when they get a certain level of, uh, wealth, it's very easy to fall prey, that we did it, that it was our strength that created this wealth. We have to remember and recognize that it was from Hashem.
[00:03:47] Another message that Moshe Rabbeinu gives over in this week's Parsha is remembering the Exodus and the challenges that that the Jews face in the desert. And actually the commentaries talk about the idea that when a person, you know, becomes successful, it's not just enough to be appreciative. You have to also remember where you came from originally, the challenges that you went through. And that's. We see very clearly in this week's Parasha. The Parasha continues with the commandment of the tablets, how Hashem told Moshe Rabbeinu to create the second, uh, tablets after the first tablets were smashed.
[00:04:25] Aaron's death, the elevation of the Levites, the reconciliation, God's reconciliation with the Jewish people after they had sinned. And the Parsha delineates clearly how, uh, the Jewish nation, how they experienced firsthand God's revelations and the miracles of God. They saw it directly this generation, they saw it directly. And it's. And Moshe is going it, uh, going. Going over with the Jewish nation, all that they had saw in Egypt and now in the desert as well.
[00:04:57] Moshe Rabbeinu talks about the virtues of the land of Israel.
[00:05:01] And finally the Parsha finishes with the second passage of Shema el um mitzvah nechim mitzavah eskamayim, um lavos hashem lokehem lav the becholu vav cholenav shechem that it will be that if you hearken to my commandments, that I command you today to love Hashem your g d and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul. And the sukkim, the verses go on that to say, you know, reiterate the idea that we've been talking about in the Parasha to begin with. That if the Jewish people fulfill the will of Hashem, they fulfill the will of God, things will be good for them. But if, God forbid, they don't, things will, um, turn, take a turn.
[00:05:42] And that is something we've seen, um, in Jewish history.
[00:05:46] Now, the first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the Parasha.
[00:05:54] And the verse reads, as Moshe is speaking to the Jewish nation, it says, ah, and you shall know in your heart that the Almighty chastises you just as a father chastises his son.
[00:06:12] Now, probably the most common question I've received in my years in, you know, Jewish education and teaching, dealing with all types of people.
[00:06:26] And it's probably not just me. I would say any rabbi who's been in a position, teaching position, and I would say this question might be the biggest question that humanity has. And the question is, and it's in different forms, how you could have this question. But it really all comes back to the same question, right? People ask, how come the Holocaust happened? How come October 7th happened? How come bad things happen to good people?
[00:06:55] How come good people suffer?
[00:06:58] And, you know, if God is a just God, he's a kind God, he's a loving God, why is there so much suffering?
[00:07:06] And some of the people that are suffering are great people. They're good people. They're not bad people. Maybe we could understand why bad people have to suffer.
[00:07:15] But the good people, why do they need to suffer?
[00:07:19] And there's a lot to talk about, you know, it's a loaded question that, you know, this question and I think we might have touched upon in other episodes.
[00:07:28] But you know, the verses here, Moshe is giving strength to the Jewish nation.
[00:07:34] And he's talking to them. He's talking about their history, where they went wrong.
[00:07:39] He's strengthening them, you know, as they enter into this new reality of living in the land of Israel. And he says, you shall know in your heart that the Almighty chastises you, just as a father chastises Hasan. Huh?
[00:07:53] Right.
[00:07:55] As a parent, sometimes it's necessary to rebuke a child, to be harsh on the child.
[00:08:03] Right? Some parents even have to give a child a patch, right? A loving, you know, you have to give them a little bit of a patch. Sometimes, let's say a kid runs into the street. You need to make an imprint. Uh, you don't do it out of anger, you do it out of love. The father does it out of love.
[00:08:18] Because you need to teach the two year old, uh, that they shouldn't go on the street so you have to give him a slap on his hand that he should remember that. But that child, he thinks, why are you hurting me? Right? Why are you doing this to me? Or you could change a little bit more. We could change this example a bit more. I don't have to go into a parent striking a child out of love.
[00:08:39] A parent brings a child to a doctor to get a shot.
[00:08:45] And as soon as that doctor comes into the the room with that needle, the child's screaming.
[00:08:51] And the parent is holding the child down as the doctor is administering this shot to the kid.
[00:08:59] And the child's like, why are you doing this to me? I thought you loved me. Right? And the answer is that the parent does love the child, right?
[00:09:07] And he's doing it because he loves him. And that's precisely why he's holding him back.
[00:09:13] It's just because this child doesn't understand that this pain he has to go through, it's gonna protect him throughout his life.
[00:09:21] He doesn't understand that.
[00:09:23] He doesn't realize that.
[00:09:25] And this idea is really, you know, the basis for our understanding to this question. I'm not gonna say it's. You know, there's different ways of dealing with it, and I'm just touching upon the subject.
[00:09:39] But I think the verse synopsizes the answer to this question, that when we see something bad happening to a good person or to us, right. Something happens to us that's challenging. And we think to ourselves, God, why are you doing this to me? Why is this happening?
[00:09:59] Uh, and I'm not trying to take away from anybody's challenging situation.
[00:10:03] I'm not trying to say, make light of any situation.
[00:10:07] You know, I'm not trying to do that. What I'm trying to say is it's an outlook. It helps us.
[00:10:12] We have to realize that from this verse, we see the way Hashem operates is like a father to a child. Hashem is our father, and we're the child.
[00:10:23] And I think once we have this step one in place, Rabbi Plisken brings down that once we have this recognition that Hashem is our father and the pain that we're going through is the same type of pain as a father to son.
[00:10:41] The pain that we're experiencing goes down.
[00:10:45] The challenge is easier to overcome.
[00:10:49] And the way that he brings it out is that, let's say, somebody falls down and is in tremendous pain, and he's not sure if he broke a bone or not, he has to go to the emergency room.
[00:11:02] And in the emergency room, they do all the scans, the X rays and they see that nothing's broken, everything's in order and he's going to recover.
[00:11:13] So now even though the person is in pain, it goes down.
[00:11:19] The realization that this is going to go away in a few days and he's okay.
[00:11:24] That that in itself helps the person deal with the situation, deal with the pain and everything and helps them get to a place, full recovery.
[00:11:35] Similarly, when a person has to take bitter medication, bad tasting medication or loa leno means, uh, this shouldn't happen to any of us. But if a person has to deal with treatments for cancer, it's very uncomfortable to go through those treatments. Very undesirable. But people do it because they know as bad as the medicine is, as bad as the uh, chemo and challenging it as it is, it's going to help them at the end of the day. And it's not totally negative, it has a purpose to it. I think this outlook, when we know that Hashem is like our father and he does everything for our best, that, you know, obviously the outlook helps us overcome the challenge. But even the pain itself that we are experiencing, it helps as well. And it helps bring it down to realize that there's a purpose for it and it's not totally negative, it's not totally bad. There is a, you know, God is out for our benefit, out for our good, and there is, uh, a. There's an ultimate good that we're trying to get to here.
[00:12:43] Thank you. The next idea I want to share with you today takes us a little further in. In the Parasha, where the Torah warns against the lure of prosperity and the psukim talk about the desert and the challenges that the Jews face there. The verse reads as Hamachilcho. Huh? Mon amidbar asher ley adon avisecha lamana noischa olomana seise who feeds you mun in the wilderness which your forefathers knew not in order to afflict you and in order to test you to do good for you in your end.
[00:13:22] Now it's interesting here about this verse. If you look at the last few words of the verse, it says in order to afflict you and in order to test you to do good for you in your end. You know, I think in the last idea that we just shared, the first thought we talked about challenges we face, why we face them and how, what's the outlook we should have.
[00:13:53] But just to take this idea one step further, you know, based on this verse, the chavzhayyim explains that if you look at The. The words, you know, talk about a test.
[00:14:04] The word to test you, to afflict you, and to test you, right? That God gives us tests.
[00:14:14] It's also the same word of, um, Nasosecha. To raise up, right? To raise.
[00:14:22] And the idea is that when a person, um, goes through a challenge and they come out of it, they're a different person, they're a better person, they're a higher person. It raises them up. The Chavitz Chaim explains, even on a deeper level, that like we said before, Hashem, uh, does things for a reason.
[00:14:46] And the people that he wants to bring the greatness out of, you know, greatness is. People aren't just born great, they become great.
[00:14:56] And the way that they become great is that they persevere through the challenges that they face in their life.
[00:15:03] It's not like a, uh, overnight, it's.
[00:15:06] Things come up, persevere. Some of it's smaller things, but the point is perseverance and overcoming challenge. And so it comes out from this that if a person is facing a challenge or challenges, it means God loves you. It means God thinks you're great.
[00:15:26] Because we know that Hashem g d does not give a person a challenge he cannot overcome.
[00:15:32] Because if he would give us a challenge, a test that we can't overcome, then it's rigged. The game is rigged. We don't have free will, and we know that we do have free will, that we have a choice. We have a choice to do good or bad, right? And that's pretty much the only thing that we actually have a choice about, right? Everything else is set for us. How much money we're going to make, um, how long we're going to live for, um, the situation we find ourselves in. But the choice we have is to do good or to do bad.
[00:16:05] And this is a very important idea that we see in this posseq, in this verse in this week's parsha that how do we look at challenges?
[00:16:14] So obviously, step one, number one is it's like Hashem is our father. We're the child. So Hashem is not out to get us. He's doing things for our benefit. But even more than that, on a deeper level, the test itself, the challenge that we face itself is something that will raise us up, make us great. Uh, uh, it's going to elevate us. It's going to become. We're going to become better people.
[00:16:43] And we should realize if we have these tests, it means that Hashem believes in us that we could become great because greatness we're not born with it. It's something which is developed and we work on.
[00:16:57] And if we're able to persevere on these tests, little by little, we're going to become greater and better. And if you ask people, and I could say this for myself as well, and I've said this on the podcast before you ask people who overcome challenge, have dealt with situations in their life and hard situations, and they were able to come out on the other end, right? They overcame their challenges.
[00:17:24] If you ask them, you know, was it necessary for you to go through that to become who you are? Would you give up that experience for anything people would tell you? No, because the experiences that they've gone through have helped them to create, you know, to create them who they are today. I wouldn't be who I am if not, uh, for the experiences that I've gone through. You know, some of them weren't so pleasant. I, uh, have to get into them, right? But it wasn't so pleasant. Certain situations had to deal with.
[00:17:55] But I believe the certain aspects and strengths that I have are because of the situations that Hashem put me in, the challenges that Hashem faced me with, you know, obviously I gotta keep going and keep doing better.
[00:18:13] But, you know, thank God, you know, you're faced with a challenge, realize you could overcome it. It's tailor made for you. There's no challenge that you have that, uh, you can't overcome. I think this is a very powerful idea from this week's Parasha.
[00:18:27] Now, I want, uh, one more idea I wanted to share with you from this week's Parasha. And it's really more towards the end.
[00:18:35] The verses say as follows. It says in the Parasha regarding the virtues of the land of Israel, that Eretz Yisrael, Israel, the land of Israel, is not like the other lands of the world. It's not like Mitsrayim, it's not like Egypt, but rather Eretz Hasher. Hashem elokeha dereche sotomed einei Hashem elokeha ba meres Hashanah at acheres Hashanah a uh, land that Hashem your g D seeks out, the eyes of Hashem your g D are always upon it from the beginning of the year to the year's end. Now the question is, what does this mean exactly? What does it mean? That the eyes of Hashem are always on the land of Israel. How do we understand that?
[00:19:15] And the Talmud actually relates exactly what this means. And I think this can give us an understanding a little bit about free will and the choices that we do have in this world, you know, because I mentioned earlier, right. The only real, you know, choices that we make and the things that are in our hands. I shouldn't say, you know, the things that are in our hands, actually, that's to be more correct. The only things that are in our hands is the decision to do good or bad.
[00:19:43] So. And I think this question is even stronger because we know that on Rosh Hashanah, uh, on the beginning of the year, we pray.
[00:19:53] We pray and God sets for us how much money we're going to make. If we're going to live, we're going to die, if there's going to be war, if there's not going to be war, what's the situation going to be? Everything is set.
[00:20:03] Everything is set already. So the question is, after that point, you know, why do we keep praying for these things during the year? We pray for these things every day. Person's in a situation where they're sick, we pray that they should get better. The person's in a situation where they're, you know, um, they don't have money. We pray that he should have money. So question is, why do we pray if everything is said in Rosh Hashanah? And I believe this verse, uh, in this week's Parsha can help us understand this, because specifically with the land of Israel, the Torah tells us that the eyes of Hashem are constantly upon it.
[00:20:41] And the Talmud relates that if, you know, if the Jewish people are doing good, and on Rosh Hashanah, it's destined that a lot of rain shall go to the land of Israel.
[00:20:56] So if they, you know, finish up the year, not so good, let's say they made some mistakes, they sin and they change around. So God will make it that all the rain, all this plentiful amount of rain that was destined for the land of Israel will go to the wrong places.
[00:21:14] And so it comes out that the rain that was destined in Rosh Hashanah does happen.
[00:21:19] All those down to each and every raindrop, it will come down, but it is going to go to the wrong places. That won't even help for the plants.
[00:21:27] And similarly, the Talmud relates that if the Jewish people at the time of Rosh Hashanah are not worthy of rain, and it's decreed that only a minimal amount of rain will come down onto the land. And by the end of the year, the Jewish people repent.
[00:21:42] God will make it that that minute amount of rain will go to the exact places that need to be, you know, that they need to go to and things will be good.
[00:21:52] And I think this idea really helps us understand maybe a little bit about free will and a little bit about what's really in our hands and what we should really focus on.
[00:22:02] Right.
[00:22:03] It comes out that on Rosh Hashanah during, uh, the New Year, things are pretty much set for us.
[00:22:13] We, you know, our Parnassah, our livelihood, our life or death, um, health, you name it. Everything from the big issues down to the personal issues.
[00:22:27] But it's really what's said in Rosh Hashanah, ah, is only the raw material, so to say. It's only the, you know, the raw.
[00:22:36] It's only the amount of rain. It's up to us where that rain should go. It's up to us, you know, even though God set for us how much money should be set for us for the year, you know, even though if he decreed it should be a less amount of money, he'll make sure. God will make sure that if we're worthy, if we make the right choices, then the money will go to the exact amount of places. And m, you'll have what you need for the year. You won't have a car bill to deal with at the end of the year. You won't have a surprise tax bill.
[00:23:07] And on the flip side, as well, if a lot of money is destined for us on, um, Rosh Hashanah and we don't do what we're supposed to do, Hashem will make it that the IRS will come right before the end of the year and give us a surprise tax bill. And that's where all the extra income goes. And it's not just for the money.
[00:23:22] It's for the challenge that we face as well. It's for the sickness that we might be destined for us. Everything could come out in two ways. If we're destined to go to a hospital, God forbid we have the ability to use that visit up to go visit a sick person, to do a mitzvah with that same visit, to do something good with it, to use up that time in a hospital in a positive way. And similarly, when it comes to challenge and pain, what we might have to feel through the year, if we pain ourselves over Torah, if we challenge ourselves to do good for others, even when it's hard to do it, we're using up that quota of pain, of challenge in a positive way. So it really comes out, I think, fits out, fits. You know, it fits very well. This whole idea that the land of Israel is specific in this regard that always Hashem is looking at it different than other lands. But even to the Jewish people in general, each and every person, this is how our lives are. Hashem is always looking at us. That even though it's set in Rosh Hashanah, um, it's in our hands. Our destiny is in our hands in regards to how those raw materials will be used and based on the decisions we make of good or bad, will determine the outcome of how our reality will look. And I think this is a very powerful idea which we see from this week's Parsha. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions, comments, or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbish Lamakonkohn at gmail com. Have a great day.
