Books Of Fear (Books of Moral Teachings)

now even though the uh the um English translation here is the book of moral teachings really the language that the uh um is using is this is something we learned in the previous lectures where the book of moral teachings are generally not going to be the uh the friendly LD stories it's not going to be about the Smurfs it's not going to be a PO Pokemon it's not going to be Su coating anything the books that are going to teach you about character trait development are the books of M which are also called the books of Y which means the book The the scary books why the scary books why are the scary books the ones that are going to teach me how to behave a better better because the scary books I.E the uh the books of M are going to tell you first and foremost the consequences of not following the law the consequences of not developing your character just like we learned in last week when we heard that really the uh original candidate to become uh the uh uh the lineage of Yuda that the mhia was going to come from was elav elav the oldest brother of David but elav although he was beautiful he was smart he was clever he was strong he was literally perfectly fit to be the next king to be the one that the Messiah is going to come from Hashem passed him over he did not choose him why because elav tended to have anger and Hashem did not want an angry leader leading his people and that's why he was passed on when Shu came to uh to uh uh choose the next king by putting the uh the special oil on them when he tried to put the oil on elav the the bottle miraculously made all of the oil disappear but but when David the youngest of all the sons walked into the room immediately the oil jumped out of the bottle and went onto David and everyone knew that he is the uh the one that Hashem chose so here we see that the Torah knowledge of eliav the uh the uh the the physical nature of elah the everything that he had was good but he was had a character trait flaw in comparison to his brother to his younger brother uh uh uh David and for that he lost something that is unrepairable I mean just imagine that if it was elav chosen that means that if there was a book that he wrote that would be the book that would be included in the tanak instead of instead of Psalms if there was a uh uh you know the stories about the continuation of the lineage it wouldn't be stories about the son of David scho but rather the sons of eliav if it was the life experiences that we learned so much from in the Torah it wouldn't be the stories of David but rather the stories of elav if it was everyone constantly trying to figure out who is connected to the mssiah where could the mhi come from we wouldn't be looking in the direction of theid and quite frankly we may have not even noticed that ever existed throughout all of history because of how the the light of elav would have shown to such an extent that everything else becomes dim next to it but that shiny light literally was almost turned off in a in a spiritual sense because of that character trait flaw so while a person had all of the qualities necessary in order to be the one that could be chosen to be the father of the the the the forefather of the mashia itself that one character trait of anger removed that from him and his brother was chosen now of course Hashem is perfect and obviously always makes the perfect choices but this the sages teach us is how much you know a person has to look at each and every character trait flaw when you realize what's on the line it's not that it's just your you know your marriage uh could be hurt by uh your anger or your relationship with your children could be hurt because of your stinginess or your relationship at work could be hurt because of your arrogance customers may run away from you uh you may not end up getting the promotion sometimes a boss doesn't want to give the promotion to the most arog arrogant guy even if the most arrogant guy is the best at what he does nobody wants an arrogant person to uh to to be a leader of his people because they know that naturally this type of trait hurts others you you know they they're in essence building themselves by walking over everybody else's corpses so it's a it's it's a trait that is detestable by most normal people so that character trait that could have gotten you uh you know the type of ambition that you needed or the type of uh motivation that uh you thought you needed in order to succeed could also lead to a lot of failures so a person when he thinks okay you know what maybe it's not worth it to be a prideful person maybe it's not worth it to be a stingy person or a lazy person or an angry person but you know worst case scenario it'll hurt this one relationship but uh that's where it's contained here the t is trying to teach us that no no no it's much more than you can possibly imagine elav was a very smart person elab understood that he had the potential to be the next king he had everything that you possibly needed for a king but the last thing on his mind that he would ever think was was that this one trait weakness that he had it wasn't like he was some angry monster beating up people in the street but it was a according to his level a character trait weakness that when he expressed anger when David came to uh see them at the uh Camp when they were going to war that was a uh already too much anger expressed Hashem says no a person like this cannot be my leader so in his Wildest Dreams or perhaps in his biggest nightmares you would have never imagine iMed that he would lose all of that just for that character trait imagine how much a person would lose just for having not just anger but also a lot of the other weaknesses and at the same token how much a person can gain by developing those character traits and perfecting them so this is some of the stuff that the books of M teach us where they're not going to tell you listen it's good for you to be generous because people will like you it's good for you to be friendly because you'll have more friends it's good for you to uh not be angry because no one's going to get scared from you that's not what you're going to find in the books of musar the books of musar are going to capitalize on the number one motivating emotion that a person has every person has which is fear fear is the is the one emotion that drives people to do most of what they do in life fear is what drives you to work fear is what drives you to marriage fear is is what sometimes drives you to have kids and sometimes what to have a divorce and sometimes to eat and sometimes to uh exercise and whatever you do generally speaking has some type of fear built into it even if you don't realize it many times people think no no I just like to look good why do you like to look good why do you spend an hour and a half two hours a day in a gym why do you want to look good the reason why is because you're afraid that people will mock you you're afraid that people won't look at you you're afraid that you may miss out on certain opportunities whether it's uh uh employment opportunities relationship opportunities and so on and so forth so a person could literally invest an hour and a half two hours a day or more exercising Without Really realizing the root of what's motivating them to actually exercise and the same goes with their work sometimes a person can literally spend their entire day working and working and working and whatever it is that they're doing because they'll tell you listen I want to be successful but why do you want to be successful oh I want to buy big things why do you want to buy these things well who needs more than one house I mean technically even if you are a uh uh you know a a billionaire you still have to sleep in one bed can't sleep in two beds you know so even if you have 50 houses you can only use one at a time and in fact even in that big house that you have you can only use one bedroom at a time and in that bedroom even if you have 50 beds you can only sleep on one bed at a time why do you work so hard to make so much money I mean sure it's F it's certainly a way to keep the score that's the argument that I used to use myself when I was on Wall Street for nearly 20 years it wasn't the money that drove me it was simply the fact that you know the money is the way for you to keep score of whether you're being successful or not and that there is a measure of Truth to that but in reality everybody that that digs deeper into their soul will find that there is a deeper meaning behind why you work so hard usually it's either it's a fear of something it's either a fear of a addressing the other parts of your life so you keep yourself busy or it's a fear of being poor it's a fear of a of uh you know being frowned upon or mocked and so on and so forth so when a person digs deep down into their soul they'll find that their number one motivation their foundational motivation to do almost everything that they do is fear-based and thereby the books of musar are building on that why waste time trying to figure out what everybody else's motivation when the truth is that everybody's foundational motivation is that fear so that's why there's so much teachings in theah about fear because if that doesn't motivate you nothing else will now of course I know there's a lot of people that say no listen Rabbi in the beginning I like to be scared I needed to be scared but now you know I like to uh uh you know I like something that's a little calmer I like something that's not going to scare me all the time oh you know what that means it you didn't change your likes you didn't change your likes you simply decided that you don't want to grow anymore you decided that you want to uh simply stop hearing about things that are going to motivate you and remind you that there's more work to do because you want to be on a spiritual vacation and of course the books of M anyone that studies them whether it's what we're learning here or many others that are out there the sages are going to tell you about different scary things sometimes those scary things are going to talk about the things that are happening in the obviously the uh uh you know the world after this world some of the things that are happening in this world that we live in and so on and so forth but the key is to know that if a person goes into this these uh uh these books of of M they'll find that these teachings have separated the subject of uh a man's character traits into its own chapter meaning that what they're trying to tell you is that developing your character traits requires a set amount of time a set amount of attention a set amount of dedication from your life in order for it to work because you can't just passively work on your you know anger problem you can't just passively work on your lazy problem you can't just passively work on any one of those character trait flaws if you want to address it then you have to go full force and not only full force on that on full force on everything else you possibly can handle at that time because you have to realize that it's not just the easy ones that you can build on and make them shine so much that uh the the uh the darkness that's among you is not going to be seen no no it's that that darkness that weakness is going to stay there and in fact going to have a bigger impact the more you work on the others and leave it behind so the Kish is telling us that the uh B mus the people that the sages that taught M wanted to get our attention by telling us that this character trait development is a separate teaching of its own but he says the truth is that the traits are not really a separate reality rather the the foundation for all everything is the same it's all part of the same Foundation but it was necessary to break off the teachings of M that are about character trade development in order for it to be more uh uh um more effective why because the foundation of every man is made up of two things Body and Soul we are meant to be a light unto the the Nations not to follow their misguided practices remember every Jew has to remember that he's a Jew and she's a Jew we don't celebrate non-jewish holidays even if they seem harmless it's a zul this respect to the Torah and could lead to CH hasem desecration of God's name stick to our holy tah and our own holidays that's the path of a true Jew but