The Six Constant Mitzvos: Mitzvah #6 Lo Sasuru. Rabbi Yitzchak Berkowitz

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The Six Constant Mitzvos: Mitzvah #6 Lo Sasuru Rabbi Yitzchak Berkowitz We ve gotten through five out of the six mitzvos., and teach us not to believe in any other powers.

1 The Six Constant Mitzvos: Mitzvah #6 Lo Sasuru Rabbi Yitzchak Berkowitz We ve gotten through five out of the six mitzvos., and teach us not to believe in any other powers. The way the Rishonim are learning it, it s not just a matter of literal but that the concept involved is not seeing any other road to success. There s one purpose to everything. There are no other powers in the world. Even has its place it s the force of challenge. And then teaches us to live with that sense of ecstasy. The is awesome. Everything He s done, everything He does is so big, so powerful, so wise, so good. We are filled with the desire to come closer and closer to Him. And is the understanding that there are consequences to our actions. It s not a game and things are for real. Everything really makes a difference. So what s left? The of :. What is this? say: ; What does this mean in practice? First the Rambam says that means not to entertain any possibility that there s an alternative to Hashem s existence. There s a general altogether. What s wrong with entertaining a possibility? What are we so afraid of? If it s so true, if we ve got the why are we so insecure? According to the Rambam you re supposed to stay away from reading questionable materials. It s not just the Rambam, but he poskins it. You re supposed to stay away from reading. There s a if you need it, you have to go and counter those who believe in it, but otherwise you re not supposed to read it. Doesn t that sound like insecurity, like we re afraid? You may read other stuff, and you ll realize that what we believe in is not so solid? If you look at the way the Rambam describes it, the answer is no. The answer is that when you re sure of yourself and you know something s right, and you realize that the world s a confusing place, and you have all kinds of human beings that have fallen prey to things that don t make sense, because of catchy ideas and catchy phrases, you understand that you need to protect yourself. You don t want to entertain the idea that maybe Hashem doesn t exist, even on a theoretical level. When you know something s wrong, when it s so that something s wrong, and you see that people are getting all mixed up by it, do you want to get mixed up by it too? What you want to do is protect yourself. When it s obvious that something s clear and something else is off, you protect your sanity by not getting involved in insanity, because you can even start getting used to crazy ideas. 21

2 I would like to take a minute or two out to talk about what has become of the whole of Western society over the generations. This is so important. The longer you re around, the more you watch the deterioration of values. Liberalism is taking ideas that everyone accepted before, and questioning them, not through intellectual honesty but simply by breaking the rules and making them socially acceptable. So much of Western thinking is based on the fact that nothing is really absolute. What counts is what goes. So what goes? Whatever you make go. And if you can slowly tear away at and allow for the erosion of accepted values, with time you ll get rid of them. And that s what happens. What was immoral a couple of years ago is today within the realm of social acceptability. Now one second is there right and wrong? Even that concept! Did the average kid in America ever really sit down and work through the issue is there absolute proof or is there no absolute proof? Society has accepted that all that counts is what society accepts. It s sort of taken for granted today. Anyone who s an absolutist is either a Fascist, an Extremist, or outdated. Liberalism says you have to be open. You have to accept it. And people buy anything. So for example, it is commonly understood by the majority of humans in the West that a most basic Jewish value is tolerance of ideals, that you have to respect everybody else s beliefs. The concept of democracy means that everyone has the right to express their opinion and believe in it. Now open your. Is there anywhere in where you find this kind of tolerance? Anywhere? You have to be someone who has never, ever read the to say such a thing! More than that, most American Jews accept as spokespeople for Judaism people whose credentials are all societal. Is there some objective way of giving someone accreditation as being the spokesman for Judaism. What do you need to be a spokesman for Judaism? Do you have to know something? Do you have to do something? What does it take? Who determines this? It s a whole world that s built on values that snuck in, they got accepted with new definitions, and everything s taken for granted. It s understood that there are a couple of stubborn, die hard Orthodox Jews that are coming back with these age old ideals. We re a minority and we refuse to accept the fact that we re a minority, and who are we to say anything anyway. So maybe they re right. Maybe the most basic Jewish value is tolerance. How do you know? What do you mean how do you know? Open a! It used to be said in Klal Yisrael that the reason for the blood libels--the reason why most non-jews in Europe actually believed that we needed non-jewish blood to bake matzos, even though there wasn t a single Jew that thought that way--was just to make sure that Jews were secure that they knew the whole world was wrong and they we were right. Should anyone wake up one day and say, Listen, we believe in the Torah, maybe we re wrong. The proof against us is that we re a minority and the whole world disagrees with us. Remember, the whole world also believes that you use non-jewish blood 22

3 to bake! When I was growing up, my mother worked for a company that was bought by two Chinese businessman. And my mother went to tell them that she had to take off for Passover. So this one boss over there stopped and thought, Oh, oh, that s the festival you need the blood for. The man was from China. My mother was in disbelief. She grew up in Eastern Europe. She grew up with this stuff. The world really believed it! The world really believed, means you have to take a non Jewish kid and squeeze out his blood so that you can bake. The world can accept anything. You talk about it long enough, get enough people to talk about it, everyone believes it even though it is absolute nonsense. Holocaust denial is perfect example. It s already becoming common even though there are still survivors!, wait, when there won t be any survivors. You think it won t be more common? It doesn t take much. Human beings are gullible. Anyone that s got knows that you don t play around with hypothesis. If you think about it long enough you can accept anything because it becomes a fact of life. You don t question it anymore. The fact that it doesn t make sense is irrelevant because it is an excepted part of life. Everyone except for us believes in Evolution. The origin of the species is all by way of evolution. Go ask anybody does it make sense, did you ever think it through, how do you deal with the basic questions? If you talk enough about it, and enough people talk about it, then people take it as fact. You can t just trust your judgment. we should always be intelligent, wise and objective.! So you don t corrupt your mind with s that you know are stupid, that you know are wrong, because if you think about them long enough you re going to believe them. That s when it comes to. Now included in that are lots of ideas of. If you open your it gives us all the different your may make in you. It is clear as day that these things are not true. You have to make sure that they haven t crossed your mind, not in an intellectual way, but at least in an emotional way. Yeah, He created but He s not really paying attention anymore. Even the of G-d understands. I ll get away with it. On a certain level, changing the whole of what the is. The is the, the absolute, and that s turning Him into some almost. So those are issues we also have to be careful of. But the is when it comes to real, and wherever you go there s, watch out. Because you can get used to any idea, silly as it may be. Look what s happened to the West. Look what s happened to Jews. It s just unbelievable how the most basic Jewish value to most Jews is what the Greeks believed in and the Jews fought. And it s funny when you 23

4 hear what they re celebrating on Chanuka. The second part of the mitzvah is. So the Rambam learns that that s a key word for all. There s another one of these misleading things that lead you astray where you end up missing the point and that s. When we get into we forget what we live for. Of course it comes in different levels. What we call our, the fact that some things are physically and emotionally comforting allows us to escape from the hard decisions of life. According to the Rambam the Torah is using as the symbol of That s where the pull towards is the strongest and that is because there s what call the. There used to be a, where people didn t know what they were doing, they were just running to bow to sticks and stones. There s the. The means that there s something going on both biochemically as well as in the way the brain functions, where people just become insane. People become insane. Maybe it s not so nice to talk, but the fact is that seemingly intelligent human beings are willing to sacrifice their, let alone their. They re willing to jeopardize their reputation, their families, their future, their, make absolute fools of themselves. is that they decided it s worth it. They think that it s such a great experience it s worth committing suicide on every other level just for this. People think that way! It s insane! It s insane! What people do to themselves! This is a one big shtick. It just takes over. You don t know what you re doing. Understanding that it is not that something within you has really thought it through and decided this is the best thing for you. It s just a of insanity. While when it comes to the is stronger than anything else, all of is like that, depending on what your issue is. People don t eat food that they know isn t good for them? People don t overeat knowing that they re making for themselves? Anything, anything someone enjoys is the same. But does he enjoy it so much that it s worth jeopardizing either his future or possibly his over? In the very beginning Mesilas Yesharim makes it very clear that when you talk about and, being in the is the ultimate compared to which everything else is. Everything else is really worthless. What happens one second after you swallow the food? Does it make a difference what you ate? Oh it sure does, but not what it tasted like. The tasty food may be making you good now. In terms of whatever pleasure there is, the second you swallow it, it s over. You don t run around dancing, You know what I just ate? It s over. 24

5 In all of it s that way: it s fleeting, it doesn t build--. So what s the issue? The issue is that it is the same as. When it came to we were afraid of what happens to your mind when you allow it to think of a possibility; it s the very same thing when it comes to. If you allow yourself to get into, to really get into it, it s habit forming. It s addictive. To the point that you forget what you live for. You forget what you were created for. So the of is saying don t be reckless. Protect what s dear to you. Protect what you live for. Don t get your brain all with the wrong ideas. Don t derail yourself. You re working towards becoming closer and closer to the and suddenly you take a detour. And now your purpose in life is to amass wealth, a little cheating here and there, some more on your. The davening goes and the learning becomes non-existent. You say it s a Daf Yomi shiur, and that s where you go for your nap That s what happens. You forget where you re going. is don t do the things that make you lose track of where you re going. The fact is that human beings run to all sorts of stuff to create something new to give them gratification when they don t get it in a meaningful way. And you find that when people are really running into, when life is tough, when life is demanding on them, often they do use in one form or another as an escape, and they get into very bad habits. That s the test. Do you take life seriously, or allow yourself to get derailed. Do you run away from real life, from real responsibility? Really look at yourself and find out when is it that when we run to most. It s when we have difficulty in standing up to the real tests of life. Bite the bullet., take the. I remember what it was like as a kid, you didn t want to do the homework, and you couldn t get yourself to do the homework; anyway to get around the homework. But honestly, when you did the homework, didn t it feel so much better? How come? You faced life. Listen, you gotta live up to your. It s the only way you grow. 25

Step 1 Pick an unwanted emotion. Step 2 Identify the thoughts behind your unwanted emotion

Step 1 Pick an unwanted emotion Pick an emotion you don t want to have anymore. You should pick an emotion that is specific to a certain time, situation, or circumstance. You may want to lose your anger