Parshat Va'era: Fame - I'm Gonna Live Forever! - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

in the 1980s every time I got into a taxicab they seemed to be playing a song which went Fame I'm gonna live forever now strange as it may seem the sentiment of that song was first expressed by Perrault Faro over 3,000 years ago if you remember our on-air and staff swallowed the stars of Pharaoh's magicians and remained as slim as before the magic which is part of the OL Torah says that Pharaoh started to fear that our staff would also swallow him and his throne let me ask you a question if the staff was going to swallow him why would he worried about his throne is the throne and more important than his own life a Jew works his whole life for Allah ma ba the world to come someone who doesn't believe in a world to come has to come to terms with the frightening finality of his own earthly existence how does a person cope with this by trying to create artifacts of his brief walk in this life to achieve a kind of eternity through others remembering his name he was the man who painted such-and-such who dreamt up the world's most advanced mousetrap who murdered the world's most famous pop star as the emerge from his limo the Paro to Pharaoh there was one thing worse than dying and that was that his throne his fame and everything that he had in this world would die with him as it says in the song I'm gonna live forever [Music] [Applause]