Life is a Choice, What's Yours? Real-Life Stories - Rabbi Yitzchak Botton

[Music] i heard this very nice story recently which very special to me because it actually reminds me a lot about my own story it was about a young man who was on the verge of seeing all of his dreams come true he was in his 20s and about to sign a major record deal he was a good singer he was going to be famous with the best-selling albums and happened to be at that exact point in his life he wound up by a string of events sitting in a class a torah class class about judaism and to his good fortune the ideas resonated in him and he felt there's nothing there's no other ms but this there is no other truth but what i'm hearing now and he realized that if this is all true then it's hard for me to go back and give my life over to becoming a famous singer when ultimately i was born for another purpose i was in a similar situation once upon a time i was pursuing a career in filmmaking film writing and i had a choice to make hollywood or yeshiva it's a difficult choice to make very difficult choice to make truth is as amazing as his accomplishment was and perhaps the difficulties that i had to overcome in order to choose the path of judaism really there's a million stories like us out there there's so many so many people today that are that are seeing the truth coming to the path of torah and ultimately i think the story that really you know captures the entire idea really goes all the way back to what we call the great rebbi eliezer he was also a young man living in the times of the tanayam rabbi yohan benzakai was the head of the academy of learning then in yavner and he was the son of one of the richest people in the world and he was working in the family business and he felt empty so his father asked him what's wrong you don't like this job we'll give you another job he was a billionaire so to speak he said abba father i'm empty because i want to go and learn hashem's torah now his father was a businessman and to me it seemed like he gave him the best practical loving fatherly advice from a business perspective he said son if you really love torah then my advice to you is this you are already in your mid-20s it's too late for you to become a torah scholar i mean you have to start that when you're young if you love torah you will teach your children and support them and they will become torah scholars you have an opportunity with your family situation to be so rich and so wealthy that you could support a lot of people's tour success but it's not a good business move for you to do an about face and forget all of what you have in front of you all the resources and run you know recklessly in the pursuit of torah if you love torah you can accomplish a lot for torah by staying in business but of course there's business advice and then there's what the heart feels and of course his heart was devoted to wanting to learn torah nothing could could get that out of his mind so eventually he just ran away and went to yavin to learn torah from the great of johann benzakai as time went on his brothers told his father this eliezer ran off he's not helping the family the family business he doesn't deserve a part of the business like we all do and the father agreed and said okay i'm going to go to yavina to rabbi yochanan ben zakai and i'm going to write eliazer out of my will so he won't inherit any of the wealth you all will on that day that he went to to visit happened to be a day that it was a great celebration and of course they sat him at the front in a very honorable place and with the yochanan realizing that that was realized his father invited rebbe elijah to speak and when rabi elijah spoke his face lit up like moshe avenue it was an unbelievable presentation of wisdom and his father watching him was so impressed and at the end of the talk rabbi yochanan said fortunate is avraham that you come from them and then of course it became known to his father orkunus that that was a son and he was so happy to see that unbelievable what is unaccomplished beyond what could be expected from anyone and he said you know your brother sent me here to disown you but instead i'm disowning them i'm giving it all to you the unbelievable self-sacrifice of rabbi eliezer didn't go to waste besides of course him becoming one of the greatest teachers of of torah his contemporaries called him the great rebbe eliezer not everybody can become so great and especially in their own lifetime be accepted and respected by their contemporaries as great but the ultimate sacrifice of giving it all up he eventually accomplished the ultimate reward in becoming great in what he loved torah now for me this story is very special because again at about 25 years old i decided to do it about face drop it all and pursue a new life and i'm one of thousands but in that decision it's not easy there are many people and many situations that are hard to pull yourself out of almost impossible and sometimes when you make the ultimate sacrifice you get the ultimate true life in return and so a choice for torah and a choice for hashem that is a choice for true and ultimate greatness greatness in this world and greatness in the world to come you