Can I be considered Moral without Mitzvah Observance? Your 30 Minutes of Enlightenment

so jack decides to go jogging on the promenade which is right on santa monica beach i used to live in l.a right near santa monica there's a pier over there people can go jogging the weather is almost always glorious so jack is going on he's going early in the morning he wants to go before those all those annoying people on their uh on their new fashion segues right he wants you know their rip sticks he's going early in the morning jogging and as jack goes jogging in the morning [Music] he looks out into the ocean and the sun is rising and well the rising east sets in the west no it wouldn't be rising there rise the other side but either way the sun is rising it's a glorious day and he sees all the way out in the distance what looks to be a man drowning the guy is going like this said he's flapping him the guy's far away and it does not look like he's swimming and jack has this moment where he says that guy is far i'm not sure if he's drowning i'm fully dressed i don't know if i want to get wet and then he says no got to do this i got his and he takes off his sneakers really quick jumps in the water swims and says he happened to have been an amazing swimmer in college he swims all the way out and as this guy is going under he rescues him he pulls the guy out of the water and he sees that it is his neighbor tom tom his next-door neighbor was the one drowning and how fortunate for tom that jack saw him knew how to swim there is no question that tom tom's body would have washed the shore days later and no one would have known where he went and jack saved his life amazing right saving someone's life okay a few days later jack the great savior knocks on tom's door tom opens up and tom says jack my buddy my neighbor my savior my angel come on in come on in it gives him a big hug come on in anything i can do for you i'm all yours come have a seat and jack sits down and tom says what can i do for you you want a coffee what can i do for your buddy i just owe you everything and jack says okay i'll tell you why i'm coming i'm i'm really uncomfortable sorry but my in-laws are coming and they were supposed to come they were supposed to come later but they're coming earlier and they're coming tomorrow actually today's sunday they're coming monday and i promised my in-laws that before they come i will repaint the guest room because they're very afraid of the lead in the in the walls an old house they're very very neurotic about it and i said i'm going to repaint it and i did not know they were coming this early i called up every painting company no one's willing to send someone out on sunday i would do it myself but i i just can't i just can't i it's a two-person job is there any chance tom that you can help me paint this room really help me with my in-laws and tom says you know i wish i could i wish i could but of all days that you came to me you don't know this about me but i'm an avid golfer i golf once a month i have this slot in the club and if i lit if i don't go i you know i gotta wait a month and i wait all month for this and i wish i could help you but the t is waiting for me i'm sorry i'm sorry okay people over here jack saved tom's life the week before jack is in a bind now he needs tom's help and tom cannot help him because he wants to go play golf but i don't want to go i'm not looking at it through jack's eyes i'm looking at it through hovering above looking at the scenario eyes okay so maybe jack does expect maybe he doesn't but you know sort of like we called the god view right and the god view okay you understand the difference between here it's not jack it's just like he needs a favor he saved your life okay if a guy saves your life and he's in a pickle that's an old daddy word dead word he's in a pickle he's stuck and he needs a helping hand and you're available technically you can miss golf for the month and be there for the guy who saved your life but no you got to go golfing [Music] do you know do you know what we call a guy like that he is lacking a moral compass you're immoral it's more than ungrateful ungrateful as i gave you i did something nice and you didn't say thank you and do something nice you would be you would be you know deep in the ocean no one finding your body perhaps you'd be eaten by sharks right you're an immoral human being okay maybe maybe i'm being judgmental of him and maybe golf is his life okay i i hear that golf does that to people that's why i stay far away right but you're an immoral person now now let's bring this home and this is this is where this is where we unload the bricks this guy saved his life how many times how many times audrey did this guy's life get saved by by jack well i think just the ones just the ones just the ones um is he going to need jack to save his life again right he's not going to need him in the future he's right that was it and yet he's immoral so let's look at who we are we are people whose lives are saved every second is your life being saved right now yeah because your heart is beating your heart could stop eating you didn't pay for it i didn't pay for it right your your aunt your antibodies are are fighting the good fight right your ears are hearing pretty good your eyes your immune system everything about you so the almighty saved our lives gave us life in the first place saved our lives daily that's why we say in the morning give us he gives us life every day and we're going to need him for the future oh my goodness what the almighty has done for us is so much greater than what jack did for tom [Music] daley gave us life sustains our life we needed him to pass we're going to continue to need the rest of our lives and then he says you know what it means a lot to me to like shabbat candles well not sure if i'm in the one second it becomes a moral issue some people don't speak about it because they don't they don't they don't look at it like this but that's really what it is if god by his own definition by our definition is the creator and the sustainer and we are the beneficiaries of that largeness whatever he asks is inadequate because whatever he asks is a a drop in the bucket and and even more so it it behooves us not just morally for what he's done for us in the past but for the next hundred years of our lives god willing so the question if somebody says to me rabbi i tell you i'm i feel i'm a good jew i keep the moral mitzvas i've heard that a lot by the way i keep the moral miss the don't kill don't steal i keep the moral ones i say my friend every one of them is a moral mitzvah if you understand that he is your creator and sustainer every mitzvah boils down to being a moral mitzvah and is our job just out of gratitude to do literally the little that he's asking now oh it's not little teeth kosher you're right if you're in uh there's a you know if you're in gary indiana maybe it's maybe it's harder right that's a uh that's a show tuned song stephanie knows right 76 trombones right music man so if you're gary indiana okay but even so i travel all the time it's my job not now not covered but outside of covet outside of snowstorms i travel all the time and certainly certainly in america it's just not so hard to keep kosher do you know how many kosher products there are on the market okay let's start backwards how many courses how many products do you eat in a lifetime in your lifetime every time you drink coke that only counts as one okay how many different products do you eat or drink in a lifetime i'll tell you the answer usually about 5 000 if you're very eclectic all the way up to 10 000. right every tropicana orange is one every hershey's borrowing is one so hundreds thousands five thousand okay ten thousand that's on max max max how many kosher products are there on the market the answer is over four hundred thousand there's over four hundred thousand kosher products that means i can go to gary indiana and get kosher cereal kosher butter kosher bread kosher salad kosher salad dressing kosher potato chips where am i going to get stuck cheese hard cheese okay you know about that but you can just certainly get soft cheese cream cheese and they also have that spreadable cheese kosher that stuff exists you know about that and you're going to get stuck with meat except that in many trader joe's around the world wherever you go you could find like empire kosher chicken but you know what my son and daughter live in tallahassee and they get empire chicken right there in tallahassee they're like how many people keep kosher in tallahassee like four three i don't know but they got good old trader joe's right german company anyways yeah that's really uh and adelaide what is it called anyways they changed name they called trader joe's it's much much much funner so keeping kosher is not as tough as we think but what about restaurants that's right yeah restaurants got a problem with restaurants you're going to get stuck and if you're one of those people who love eating out move to manhattan or brooklyn or yerushalayim or for instance cleveland or chicago or minnesota really any city that has a baseball team i don't know what it is but the cities with baseball baseball teams all have big jewish communities toronto montreal miami it's just it's bizarre you know natalie it's true it's weird so not hockey not hockey hockey's not a sport let's just let's just get half the world angry at us neither is soccer okay now the other half of the world is angry i someone said how do you enjoy zoom i said it's funny because i just like to speak to myself and see if i can make you laugh so keeping keeping good i had um i had students when i was around by ucla so i had um i had a day called discover jewish la it was a very fun day and i would take you know 15 20 students i'd bring them into the to the ortho part of town and i would take them to a jewish day school a jewish hot salad which is a first aid ambulance corps i would take him to the mikvah let them see that it's a really really nice day didn't charge for it just a wonderful day fed them breakfast lunch and then part of that day i did something if if any of you are still in college and you want to have fun like fun with hillel people do this it's the funnest thing okay and if you're still in college next year who knows okay so this this is it it's called the the kosher scavenger hunt i i invented this but it's so easy to do basically uh i took 25 products normal products ketchup salad dressing you know marinara sauce whatever it is 25 products and i would i wouldn't say the generic like just ketchup or bread or butter and i would say find me a and then i taught them the kosher symbols the basic ones i owe you the okay the kafke the star k all the regular kosher ones and i said find me a kosher version of each of these food products give me the name and tell them which kosher symbol has on it and whoever fills out the whole sheet first bingo and he win a prize and and he's i sent them off they went running through the store either went running and cereal courtesy oh fruity pebbles kosher almost all of them are kosher ice cream like almost all ice cream is kosher people don't even realize only the ones not my with marshmallows are not most actually most ice cream is kosher there's so much kosher out there it's amazing and the and when they come back so they have their old sheet fill out give out the prizes and the reaction is the reaction that i look for the reaction is rabbi there's kosher versions of everything i said uh-huh you literally have to go out of your way to eat not kosher like you have to say i want where is that one mayonnaise that's not kosher like you know miracle whip kosher almonds mayonnaise kosher paul newman kosher like what's not kosher now there are certain things where you'll have a harder time with that i'd be a little facetious because there are certain places where it's a little bit harder to find but i never ever had a problem i never went starving i always went to the local supermarket i was able to buy heinz baked beans and peas anything most of these things in cans are kosher they all have kosher symbols on them the bottom line is that the almighty says i kept you alive i gave you life you needed me in the past you need me for the future this is what's important to me this is my love language but i feel spiritual doing yoga it's not my love language it's not showing me gratitude it's you're just being you know you you may as well go to the far east and you know go to some some ashram in tibet and you know do your own thing you want to connect with me i'm telling you how stop guessing i'm going to make it easy now we're going to take this one step further and this is to me just a fun wonderful true step you guys are all following me right okay so you know i have a lot of a lot of kids thank god i have 11. and the kids are good in different things and not so good i i'm not really much of a math guy you know i never loved math i know all you are mathematicians but uh my i had my my grandson who's not even five yet and he was sitting on my lap this shop is so cute dimples both sides boaz his name's boz and i'm holding him and we're bouncing but little do i realize uh he he has pulled the stem out of my watch and he changed my time on my watch now on shabbos you're not allowed to change the timeline he's not five years old but now i'm stuck with the wrong time the rest of the shops and this is friday night so i look at him and everyone they're looking like are you upset i said i'm not upset but i have to do math now i have like add 55 minutes there every time like ah stop with math i said boys you made you made grandpa do math bad bad so so some of the kids are good in certain things they're not good in other things so what do i do so i am a big advocate of incentives why because the torah says that the torah says give incentives prizes are a good thing people who say oh don't you're going to spoil them spoil them it's hard enough being a kid really would you want to go back being a kid never ever not forever right right fourth grade stunk you know no one wants to go back to fourth grade right so it's hard being a kid give the kid an incentive you know we make kids sit at a desk for seven eight hours we are so add we can barely sit for we're going to the elevator we take out our phone we go on to an escalator we do that you're on an escalator like really you're in the bathroom for one minute about kids sit for eight hours and stare at the teacher at point in a place it's really you know montessori all the way baby right this this stuff is just it's whatever we're it's archaic don't get me started i got myself started okay so kids have it hard enough having to pay attention and sit in a squishy desk with their hands folded getting a's on tests being bullied in the playground living up to peer pressure having cliques being on the outs getting pimples right it's just it's a nightmare being a kid let's be honest you know so natalie's like yes you shall just be born grown up and stay in our twenties okay wait till you get the wait to have the kids you'll have bills you'll wish you were kidding no you won't no you won't so what i do is i offer my kids prizes and i say you get an a you get 100 i'm going to give you a nice prize so the kids they work really hard and they get an a in whatever subject and they come to me they say hey i'm giving you the a you said you would take me to the store and buy me the prize and i said yep i'm going to do that but i take the kid to the store and i buy him a prize now did he give me an a do i get anything out of his a not really not really you want to be a let me drop off be a dropout you know do i get do i get anything out of my kids yeah okay gets to a better school and then what he'll get a better job but what do i get out of it do i plan on him supporting me when i'm 70 nah i'm not going to do that right that's bad policy so knock us giving is receiving ah such a mature crowd here i love it however bottom line is that bottom line is that i'm not you know they're not giving me i'm giving him or her a prize in order that they should get a good grade so that they get a job so that they can get more money basically i'm giving them something so they can get something more that's what parents do we love our kids so much that we give our kids stuff so that our kids will improve and get more stuff that's what mitzvahs are hashem gets nothing out of us saying abraca it's nothing when we say abraha it's us it's our lives that's that are enhanced our gratitude our connectedness we are finite hashem is infinite i want to connect to something that is eternal i make my barakah i tell hashem i have tremendous gratitude so hashem is giving me mitzvahs to help me improve me and improve the world so now when jack needed something when jack asked for the paint to be done in for his in-laws jack actually needed something hashem never needed anything hashem is the parent who's giving us stuff just so he can give us more stuff so now look at the weight of our moral obligation to take mitsu seriously hashem gave us life free gift hashem saved our lives every single day a child's life is in grave danger children have a very underdeveloped immune system it used to be that four out of ten children would not make it into their teens i'm not going back thousands of years i'm talking about the 1920s it's very very very difficult before antibiotics before people understood how to get rid of bacteria and milk and the milk came from swill like things were things were brutal and yet hashem allows us to do battle so he created us sustains us we need him in the past we need him for the future the stuff that he's asking is doable and it's for our own good it's not even for him when you put this package together it makes us really feel like you know what i i i want to do this i i view it as a moral obligation now i'm going to finish with one more are you where we do we we see this right i want to tell you one more interesting idea that is connected to a fascinating muscle very interesting idea so what if a person says well god i never asked you to create me yeah you're right you sustained me but you're the one that showed that that chose to create me so you created me so why am i obligated i never asked to be created [Music] okay ready for the muscle it's a good one so there's a fellow there are these two fellows who live in a town in europe and one of them was blind and one of them was deaf now there also happened to be two ladies who lived in that same stettle that's a little little village little stettle one of those ladies she was a nice lady she was a nice looking lady she you know she had she had qualities but she had one deficiency she could not she could not stop talking she just didn't know when to say when and it chased everyone away it was just it was way over the top and she did not know how to take a hint and then there was another lady in the town who is the sweetest person she's very very nice person unfortunately she was born with certain deformities that made her difficult to even look at and these two ladies they were getting older and no one was marrying them and things were tough finally yentl the matchmaker says i have an idea for the lady who cannot stop talking who should she marry the deaf guy that for the lady who's a very nice person the only thing is she has all these deformities she should marry the blind guy that would be two great shidduchim two great matches let's do this and she proposes it and sure enough like magic muzzle dove double muzzle dove that's great that two weddings it was wonderful and that went on there nice marriages and things went on for a year or two beautifully one day a guy comes to the city and he's a very famous doctor and he had abilities to cure deafness and to cure blindness and he charged quite a bit of money but he was very effective for almost everyone that that he that he met he was able to cure them and these two people they were very excited while the blind person said wow i would love to be able to see the deaf person wow to be able to hear would be amazing they each went to the doctor and the doctor agreed to treat them and the doctor cured both of them of their ailment and the blind guy he can't believe it opened his eyes light color wow it's so amazing and he goes home he can't wait to finally see his wife he's going to be sober he gets home opens the door hello my dear and he's like shocked what what's going on goodbye hello and uh the deaf guy he's so excited to be able to hear the lyrical sound of his wife speaking hello how are you dear i could hear you oh now you can hear me today before like days and days a few days later they both get a bill in the mail from the doctor to pay up and they both said we're not paying we are not paying you doc says well why not they said well we we we're going to pay you to enhance our lives but you did the opposite you've made our lives terrible our lives are bitter now our marriages are falling apart instead of improving you have you have hurt us in a grave way we don't feel we should pay for that the doctor says that's not my business i i made you be able to see i may be able to hear you have to pay and they decided to go to the local rabbi oh come on can come just like they're like i want them to see he this boy of mine just came back from from arvie from mayroof this is is that your third time going to seoul third time he just turned bar mitzvah it's his third time going in the snowstorm guys can you clap for this man you can't hear it because it's on you okay sweetie okay now go dry yourself off here close the front door okay thank you wow wow i didn't go i'm old snow's too high anyways so so they said we're going to go to the local rabbit to see whether we have to pay or not and they went to the local rabbi and the rabbi stroked his beard he said okay he said i've thought about your case and i've decided that the blind man and the deaf man are correct he did not improve your life and therefore you do not have to pay this person for making you be able to see and hear and because he did not improve your life he will he then has the right to take back his services and therefore i'm going to ask the doctor to make you blind again and make you deaf again and they said no no no no no we don't want to comply and death again because ah you don't want to so he did improve your life so pay that's the muscle that's a story to help us understand what's the nimsho the nimsha is that if a person says well god i didn't tell you to create me right i never asked to be created so then god says okay you don't want to be alive corona you want to be alive can't so you don't be alive god please help me please save me every day sustain me give me food give me clothing and give me warmth ah so you do or don't want to be alive you do want to be alive so then then you have to have gratitude understand so we did today was a very fascinating study into the morality behind keeping midsize so no fluff all solid and bizarre i hope you'll be able to not just incorporate this but use it whenever it is that you struggle with whatever mitzvah to remember we number one have a moral obligation to do it number two it is hashem's love language number three uh it is prudent because it is helping sustain us it is also doable it's doable and it's for our own good so there's so many reasons to approach this that we should go and do it okay thank you everyone i hope you have an amazing week hope you enjoyed and take care i'll see you next week