Lessons I Learned Selling Chocolate

This Torah class is brought to [music] you by torahanytime.com. A Torah anytime original series. Avodas Hashem is about being proud. Seeing Hashem in yourself. Seeing it in others. That's why we have a mitzvah of rebuke. You ever thought about it? We have a mitzvah [music] to rebuke your fellow girl. Why can't we just live and let live? Uh because one second, I have a piece of Hashem in me. You have a piece of Hashem in you. I need to survive I have a taskin. You have a taskin. We're interconnected. You have to I have to love you the way I love myself. Everything It's insane. How could I possibly love you the way I love myself? Uh because I'm loving not you but the piece of Hashem in you. So the same way I love the piece of Hashem in you I love the way I love the piece of Hashem in me cuz it's the same. It's like for many years I would go sell wrapping paper in like elementary school. Wrapping paper and chocolates to benefit my school. Lakewood you have kids selling >> [snorts] >> um raffle tickets for High Lifeline. So in Rochester where I grew up out of town community so you sell wrapping paper and chocolate. And only later on in my life that I realized like oh it's obviously for Christmas but whatever. It was benefiting my school. I was totally naive. So in Rochester there's like seven and a half Jews. So the overwhelming majority of the people I'm knocking on on their door I'm selling it to non-Jews. Now So it's three and a half Jews now. Okay. Times have changed. So if you go to like a Jewish person's house a meshulach comes to the door there's 90,000 things going on all at once. There's five kids in the bathtub. Three kids built a slide of blankets going from the chandelier all the way to the basement. You have kids all over the place. So a meshulach comes the family has no time. The father takes out a three a $3 shoves it in his face. He's saying some sort of brocha and you slam the door. You go to a non-Jewish person's house supper time it is a slow moving operation. Okay? You come there. First of all there's no one there. It's just the man and the wife. If that but the >> [laughter] >> the man is on the couch rereading the New York Times. I mean he read it this morning he's reading it again. The mother or the woman is at the dining room table. She's doing a crossword puzzle sipping a chai latte. Okay? So they got all the time in the world. You knock on the door. Hi I'm selling wrapping paper AND CHOCOLATE. OH [screaming] OKAY LARRY COME. THEY START leafing through your catalog. It's very interesting. Okay. And then I like that one. I got to go get my checkbook. Disappear [music] for 5 minutes. They got their checkbook. Oh I got to get my glasses. Then they come back. I need a pen. By the time they select what they want you're in there for hours. So for many years doing this I got to see a lot of non-Jewish people's dining room and living room. And what I noticed struck me. Every single Jewish house in the world has bookshelves everywhere. Everywhere. And on these bookshelves there are minimum 15 shelves worth of stories. Minimum. There's three shelves from Rabbi Krohn. There's two and a half from Rabbi Presansky stories to light your heart. Now there's Rabbi Rabbi the other speaker what's his name? Landau sparks 19 and a half shelves of Rabbi Spiro stories to ignite your heart and to light your soul and to ignite and to explode and to engulf. >> [laughter] >> I never once walked into a non-Jewish person's house and saw even one book of stories. I never walked into a non-Jewish person's house and saw [music] stories from the football team. Stories from church. Why is that? Because we're one that's why. Because we [music] are interconnected. Because the Yidden in Australia need to read about the Yidden in Vancouver. Because I am you and you are me. Because I have a chelek Elokai mimaal and you have a chelek Elokai mimaal. We are proud of each other. >> [music] >> You've just experienced another Torah class brought to you by torahanytime.com.