Chol HaMoed: Holy Weekdays You Shouldn’t Waste | Rabbi Yosef Benyaminov

Chol HaMoed. What in the world do these two words mean? Chol HaMoed. Chol means >> [music] >> regular and Moed means holy. Like a time holy time. Regular holy time. In other words, it's in between. The intermediate days for of Sukkot and Pesach are called Chol HaMoed. But what are we supposed to do during these days? Is it >> [music] >> a holiday or is it not a holiday? Well, it's a little bit of both. Certain things you're not allowed to do, certain things you're allowed to do. Right? The sages tell us whoever does not respect the Moadim, meaning Chol HaMoed, is >> [music] >> is very bad. Why? Because some people treat these day these days like a regular day. You can do whatever you want. You cannot do. There's so many rules about these. It's almost like uh Shabbat or Yom Tov where there's a lot of things you're not allowed to do. >> [music] >> The basic idea is that you're supposed to spend time with your family, to go on trips, to >> [music] >> bind yourself to get closer together, and also supposed to learn more Torah. >> [music] >> But that's why our sages and the Torah forbade uh work. Right? It's not a good idea to work during Chol HaMoed unless you absolutely need to, you're going to lose money, you're going to be fired. But really you're supposed to spend this time on your family and yourself. That's what Chol HaMoed is all about. Right? You're not supposed to do things just oh I have time now I'm going to uh change the oil in the car, I'm going to build something, I'll make additions to the house. All these things are not allowed. It's time that you celebrate not just with your family yourself, but also with Hashem. These are very very uh unique days. And that's why there's so many rules about what you're allowed to do, what you're not allowed to do. Because Hashem says, "You know what? I want you [music] to be close to me. But when you have too many distractions, you do other things, you're all over the place, you take care of all your, you know, errands and things, you won't have time to sort of say spend with Hashem." So that's why our sages in the Torah forbade many different activities, so a person has enough time and peace of mind to be able to connect to his family, to himself, and to Hashem.