The Normalcy of Miraculous Times - Rabbi Berel Wein

[Music] we live in a miraculous time as far as Jewish history is concerned the Jewish world today resembles no other time in its history certainly for the last two millennia and maybe even earlier and when people live in a time that is so momentous and so miraculous we would be unable to function if we really thought about it so the rabbi's therefore said the great rule ain't ballin ESMA Carboni so person or a nation or a society to whom miracles occur do not recognize it as being miraculous they recognize it as a series of events coincidences normalcy that's the way the world works and that enables us to get up in the morning and do what we have to do and not be awestruck by the time that we live in the task of rabbis however is to realize how abnormal the society and the times are and somehow to remind the people of it and I want to point out to you the abnormality of our time so that we can appreciate what is happening and we can appreciate what we are supposed to do the Jewish people have experienced Nissim miracles throughout our ages we have two holidays that are devoted to the memory of nissim of miracles one of Hanukkah and one is Purim and we make the Brava sure so nice in Louisville say no about you me my name buzz Manasa it was a miraculous time but it was a miraculous time because we are looking in hindsight at the moment that it occurred people didn't realize it was a miraculous time the Talmud teaches us that by Hanukkah the rabbi's could not establish the holiday of Hanukkah immediately it says leshawna or Ferris they had to wait for another year another time when they could look back and the people would accept that as being a miraculous holiday so I want to ask you if the candles on the menorah had oil only for one day and it burned for eight days so what do you have to wait for you see the miracle in front of your eyes so there were different groups of people as there always are especially within the Jewish people so there was some that said well you know it's a fake miracle there he somehow brought in other oil or no one was there really to see that it burned all the time in the books regarding the Maccabees they say that the Helenus Jews those who literally supported the Greeks against the Jews and the Jewish world there are such people unfortunately they all said that it's phony not a miracle so the rabbi's have to wait only in the perspective of time that somehow the Jewish people come to believe that it was a miracle and it's a miracle that has lasted until our day a miracle that we celebrate yearly that inspires us to the Future poram is even a greater example of that poor him if you read the megillah is a description of a Persian palace intrigues worthy of the current White House whole bunch of things happen here the king kills his wife his wife then show up at the party the way he wanted her to show up he has a beauty contest which is the proper way to choose the king and become president and the most unlikely candidate in the world wins the kumara says Esther your octorok that's all you saw she was a poor complexion she was not a beauty now we all know that beauty is in the eye of the beholder I remember that when I headed by yeshiva in muncie many years ago so one of the young men in my Smith class I had a good idea for that he should take out this certain girl I felt that it was going to be a perfect shooter and so if the Rebbe tells them that they got her out there too later I said to him well how did it go you want to go again he said no they said no why not strive second and he hemmed and hawed and he finally said to me I have to tell you the absolute truth I have to marry a very beautiful woman and she isn't that's I have no words to say after that two years later I am performing the wedding of this young man with a very fine woman now no woman in the world is ugly but this one was close and he has to marry a very beautiful woman so he married a very beautiful woman so traitor's chooses esther strange and what's a base shock of girl doing in a beauty contest and she's got an uncle mortified who somehow becomes an informer to the king about people who are plotting against him but this jointed events nothing to do with anything and then all of a sudden the King appoint chaemin and somehow because the Mordecai's intransigence woman is unable to overcome his personal hatred and he wants to destroy all the Jewish people and he arranges that that should happen and the King agrees and he signs the decree now the Jews in Persia were in good shape then they were a minority but they were not a persecuted or despised minority we read in the novena Hesco that the Jews came to the Navi some decades earlier and they said to him listen we've been driven away from our land we've lost our national independence we're never going back again the why should we make any fuss over observance of Jewish custom and tradition the whole ago in base Israel the Jewish people like all the glaive we be good Persians they're gonna be Persians of the mosaic persuasion which is what reform called themselves in Germany in the 19th century there were Germans of the mosaic persuasion so we quit that all he is nonplussed I don't know what to say that night he has a prophetic vision in kaviraja the Lord appears to him and God asks him because the Lord is nothing of not courteous like what happened at the office today you know what sudden of he says Zeek nice royal the elders of Israel came to me and what did they say to you they said we quit they said can I go in basis or equity more Marta Liam what did you answer them aha Malachy motto your daya Lord only you know I have no answer for them what are you supposed to tell them what are you supposed to tell people that think that the future of the Jewish people is dependent upon our attitude toward transgender children who are speechless so God said I'll tell you what to tell them : RM smokers thus says the Lord of Hosts tell them who you will yeeaaahhh devar Isaiah don't - forget it they'll never be Kahala going basis well I'm not gonna let that happen in kilo and local am the famous Foucault of his run it to you I will rule over them with an upright hand I'll scare the life out of them I'll show that it can't be Kahala GUI and within two decades we have the story apart here comes Holmen it comes Hitler here comes Stalin here comes our fat here comes the whole gay ghetto I'll call it what are you talking about how dare you be a member of the United Nations how dare you say you were also entitled to be on the Security Council the only country in the world that does not belong to any regional group in the United Nations and therefore can never be on the Security Council you want it to be like everybody else okay it's not gonna happen I'm not gonna let it happen so now the Jews face destruction and then all sorts of strange things happen someone is so infuriated by the fact that Mordechai doesn't bow down to live so that's always the way people are in the world people are what they don't have not what they do have it's not that the glass is half empty and half full the glass could be 99.99% full but it's not full there's always more in the Torah reading of yesterday it's very hard to speak to us re-emits over right it says beamed although if he is poor they note Omar said yes and his hand it doesn't reach out for enough well so then the other have to bring an animal he can bring a bird he can bring flour etcetera so all the commentators say you already said he was poor doesn't mean name your DOMA sega's that his hand doesn't reach and that's the lesson of human beings if your hand doesn't reach to what it wants and you're poor doesn't make any difference what your portfolio is doesn't make any difference what you have it's what you don't have and that's a lesson in life that's why cuz I've said example one show not Samantha hELCO who was the truly wealthy person someone that somehow it sounded fine I remember that when two of my grandchildren were very young and they were playing ball two brothers and one of the brothers the older brother was monopolizing the ball and the younger one wanted to play so he said to the other brother he said give me the ball I'll give you a penny and the other brother said I already have a penny what I need wonderful well thank god he's outgrown that but but that's something to think about I already have one I have enough you know my Sega says his hand reach out home but has the whole world bow before him you know and one cropsy Jew in the corner doesn't bow down before it he goes berserk loses mind because of it he comes to the keyboard a crazy proposition she's going to build the gallows 100 feet in the air they're gonna hang them wild irrational but the world is irrational and human beings are irrational so he builds this tremendous gallo cuz I'll say it tongue-in-cheek that if he knew he would whom he was building it for he would have built a 10 inches off the floor but you're building for the other guy or the other guy you can't hang him high enough then the whole plot unravels and homeland gets killed and the Jews are saved the name of God does not appear in the Megillah anybody that lived through the time could say what an interesting set of circumstances look at all of these incidents that happened there's nothing to do with anything and in fact among the Jews that were those who said it in amongst Jews that were scholars observed in Jews it says at the end of the Megillah about Mordechai Roth's wheeler Rover cause most of the brothers got it they understood what happened there were those that didn't those who said what are you talking about he he didn't sit and learn all day so how could it be any good so let's transpose a little of this to our time the how we see the world and we see the events that have occurred we're celebrating now 70 years since the creation and the founding of the State of Israel in all of human history there has been no comebacks there always gone Greece is gone Britain that's never gonna have Hong Kong again that's all gone there are no comebacks and all of a sudden we came back against all odds and we came back after the worst of times that the Jewish people had known from millennia when everybody gave up on us I cannot tell you the depression and feeling that existed in the Jewish world in 1948 and it was advertised widely that the Arabs are gonna throw the Jews into the sea it's gonna be god forbid a second Holocaust and that it's all over in Chicago that were then two frantic drives that went on one was a frantic drive to raise funds in order to buy arms for the State of Israel because they did not have any heavy weapons and the only places that you could allow heavy weapons to be bought is strangely enough that you force from Joseph Stalin and Czechoslovakia which is a miracle in itself the miracle that both the United States and Russia for the first and only time in the history of the Cold War voted the same on a major issue and there was a second try to try and bring as many refugees out of the Jewish state as possible because they were going to be destroyed and we were not going to sit idly by as we did during the Holocaust so there was a drive to bring a hundred thousand time mber two hundred thousand Jews from the land of Israel and all of a sudden something happened against all odds against all wisdom and the state arose so when the state of wrote there were great people I don't want to quote their names but it's recorded in many many books great people who said that the state would not last fifteen years at the outset at the outside rather 50 years because how could it last here it was run by atheistic socialists anti-traditional people you have to realize the metamorphosis of the State of Israel over 70 years that when you come there it's in soil today it's a Jewish state I'm not saying it's an observant one but it's a Jewish state that was not so in 1948 Stalin supported in these minutes he recorded the reason he supported the equation of State of Israel because he was assured by the Israeli Communist Party that the Jewish state would be a Soviet satellite so how can we support a state made by atheists by anti traditionalists so the Lord has a way of mocking us kylo massive upside massive upset and below dart am drunk only on Mirage then you don't get it you'll never get it so don't try and get it don't speak in essence the Lord says if I may paraphrase him you know the Lord is not smoking to me in the last two weeks so I can tell you much either but but the Lord says you know leave me out of this right stop trying to figure me out my ways are not your ways my thoughts are not your thoughts you just played a game but we're always smarter than he and therefore how can it be and then there were those that said I mean I remember all during my adolescence I made a speech last week about being raised in a society that was not affluent so all during my adolescence I remember that my parents would not buy things for the house simply because of the fact that they had to send script to Israel it was like care packages you sent the certificate there was a warehouse in Israel they took their certificate they went to the warehouse then they got a box of food the problem in Israel today is what we do with all the excess food there's an organization called legatus royal that does nothing but collect the excess food to try and you can't get rid of it all of it in Israel so it was clandestinely they were sending to this area so in but in my lifetime there was no food there with two eggs a week my grandmother wrote my father that they hadn't had chicken in three months and this this is gonna be your state and then God is gonna send them people 600,000 Jews from the countries who had lived in the Muslim countries before they were Muslim countries and the Jews in Egypt were from Bahia Shanee the Jews from Ethiopia were from by history show the Jews from Iraq from boville from the time of the Talmud and before and they all and they come at once they don't come you know one at a time there's no housing there's no food there's no jobs a different culture that generation wasn't happy but somehow their children and grandchildren are flying f-15s developing computers becoming Russian Yeshiva owning cars than taking pay cell trips it's pretty miraculous I mean a look at Africa with Africa is a blessed continent that has tremendous raw materials as the ability to be really one of the wealthiest places on earth and it's a complete basket case from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean well you would he also had 70 years to do something and it's a modular society more or less and look at the world how destroyed it is even though it also adds apparently everything it needs and here you got this little country made by a bunch of shopkeepers and shoemakers and tailors you know and who see themselves and the world sees them but somehow a major player America's best ally how do you like that that America needs us the United States sold its newest fire to playing the F 135 s the Israel so when the first two were delivered so the United States sent an Air Force general to inaugurate the program and the Israeli Air Force chief was present and they had a formal meeting and went in front of cameras and speeches about how wonderful it is and they've got this fighter plane that does everything the helmet that self costs I think well over six million dollars and you don't have to do anything you just have to look and it shoots wherever you look so when it's all over the Israeli Air Force general expresses his thanks to the United States government and to Lockheed Martin for producing this plane and then he adds subtly as only Israelis do of course we'll have to make a few improvements and they did and they sold the improvements back to America so how did that happen and we have great problems but we have had unbelievable success and the Torah it says oh I need so Elohim lavalla cockles little going me care of going has there ever been a case where God has extricated the people from within another people that he did only extricated us from Egypt in our time you know there are a million Russian Jews in Israel I just think about it after 75 years of communism after having no contact with Judaism after being only Russian a million of them picked up and left it beggars the imagination and they are the most successful ally and Israel had been the Russian alia and they mote many of them have become Jews again in the fullest sense of the word and the other around the way it's Jewish Israel is Jewish all of the dairy companies advertise to sell their products for Schwartz if there was an ad in the on the Israeli radio before peso don't clean your car just rent the car from us for a week everybody understands that don't clean your car you know everything try that in America what are you talking about so we live in a time of great miracles but we take all of the miracles for granted and we as I mentioned earlier because we have to otherwise it would be too awesome for us but at certain moments we should stop and consider what has happened to us and the understanding of the rebuilding of Torah in our time is also beyond imagination I told this story earlier in this week that when rabbi le mayor blaugh such how the great Russia Shiva tells in Cleveland came to Cleveland in the 1940s and he reestablished I'll show you Shiva so he went to the local Jewish bookseller and he asked to buy a safer toesik ocean so sufficient in Lithuanian yeshiva world was like a basic book of study so he asked for to buy the book and the book seller said will he wait a few minutes rabbi and he climbed up to the attic that avoided him and he came down with a dust-covered old tattered book and he gave it to him and he said rabbi be careful this is the last Sousa hoshin in Cleveland but it wasn't it just wasn't who would have imagined what we have now that's not to say that our systems are perfect there are no perfect systems there are no perfect people we have to make our way we have many great problems to overcome but nevertheless it's a blessing that we have these problems to overcome because I don't know if you're out of business you have no problems it's easy when I was a lawyer many decades ago before I repented so I I represented a certain client a very large real estate transaction that he was going to do very well when the transaction was completed he had bought very low and he was selling very high and it was substantial money and I saw that he wasn't happy that was before I gave him my bill and I said what's wrong he said you know my accountant told me you know much income tax and when I have to pay so I told them I said I would think that you would be happy to have to pay income tax if you don't have to pay any income tax you're broke you're poor but people don't think that way so the problems that we have are problems of affluence problems of too many children in the classroom all sorts of problems political problems but those are the problems of success not a thing though they're the problems of the miracle that the Lord has performed for us and the time that we live in things that were unimaginable just a few short decades ago I again remarked earlier this week that when I went to law school no one wore a key pod in the school and certainly not out on the street you were a Jew but you had to be careful to be a Jew every time I see on Shabbat people going to the synagogue wearing their tallit outside so without passing comments whether that's correct to do or not but that is a measure of how far we have come I can be a Jew I can be elected vice president the United States and be a Sabbath observer you know and Barry Goldwater ran for president his grandfather and grandmother were Jewish but converted to Christianity in Arizona and Goldwater ruefully said it would be ironic that the first Jew that selected the high office in America is a presbyterian but that's not true anymore that need not be true so it's a ripple effect miraculous times and because of the fact that it becomes so regular to us and so accepted and we are so accustomed to it so the idea that it is miraculous escapes us but the 70th anniversary of the State of Israel is one time when we should at least have the flash that it's miraculous that we live in extraordinary times that we have opportunities that were not present for millennia for the Jewish people and that each and every one of us has an obligation and an ability and an opportunity to help build the Jewish people to help build Torah to help build the State of Israel and thereby to fulfill the dream the promise that the Lord made to us that we see unfolding before our very eyes I want to thank you all for coming tonight it's been a pleasure to be here be well and we'll hear good news from each other 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