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Be Like Mario | Rabbi David Haber
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Transcript
Auto-generated transcript. Not time-synced to the video.
I have a simple question.
Why?
If you are a part of the Vayimaen family,
if you listen to this audio
or watch these videos,
it means that you're trying.
It means that you're
trying to be מחזק yourself
in the area of Shemirat HaEinayim.
And yet,
if you are like me, it's not easy.
You go down the street,
there are sights
that you don't want to see.
We go through a store,
there are images there that
we desperately don't want to see.
We fly on a plane,
we drive in a car, wherever we go,
there are sights, there are scenes,
there are things,
there are events or episodes
in which we wish so dearly
that we didn't have to see.
So the simple question is this,
Why does Hashem make it this difficult?
I think this may be the answer.
When I was younger,
there was a very, very
famous and popular game
that was played by millions
of children across the world.
That game was Super Mario Bros.
The objective of the game was simple.
There was a little man, a caricature,
and he would walk across your screen
and he would move at fast pace
as you push the buttons.
And the goal was for him
to get to his final destination,
without ever getting damaged,
or without ever getting hurt.
And essentially,
what he'd have to do was
he'd have to avoid all sorts
of obstacles along the way.
His job was to jump over the obstacle
to the other side,
thus avoiding the hazard
that was in his way.
But very often, very interestingly,
as he would jump,
there would be a gold coin
hovering overhead,
and through the jump, he would
grab a coin on his way down.
And so with every obstacle,
he’d grab a coin,
one after the other, after the other,
as he would slowly earn points,
one after the other, after the other,
making his way to winning the game.
In this game of life,
it's very similar.
Chazal tell us,
Hashem wanted to give
the Jewish people merits.
Therefore,
Hashem gave us Torah
and He gave us the Mitzvot,
in order to give us merits.
On face value, this seems very obvious.
He wants us to earn points.
He gave us Torah to learn
and Mitzvot to do.
But the Alter from Kelm
says something different.
He says something a little deeper.
He says: You know what
it means לזכות את ישראל?
It doesn't just mean that
Hashem wanted to give us merits,
it means לזכות,
you take the זי”ן and the כ”ף
and you bring it together,
Hashem wanted to purify us
as a Jewish people.
לפיכך, therefore,
He gave us the Torah and the Mitzvot.
If the objective of this
game of life is to purify us,
then Hashem gave us
different things, to do just that.
Some of those things are obstacles.
There are obstacles
along this game of life,
hazards and difficulty,
things that can throw us off course,
and it can make us lose the game.
But when we jump,
hovering right above that obstacle
is a gold coin.
The next time you see an obstacle,
the next time there's a hazard,
the next time there's
a challenge that's presented
that's so difficult for you,
I have one small piece of advice.
Be like Mario.
Jump.