(Part #2) Jews and the News: The Good, The Bad and the Holy with Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit

[Music] welcome back to klm the cavanaugh mitzvos foundation and we're zoho to be in the yubanet base hamidrish once again let me ask you a question who do you think is the most amazing employer in the entire world you know what i'm gonna say hashem is but let me prove it to you okay imagine the following scenario imagine you you're starting out this new job you heard it's really a top opportunity so the boss you go in you come in early you're dressed well you sit at the table and he says to you okay here's your job assignment um i would like you to take the next two or three minutes um to think okay i just want you to think so you go okay sure so you after i think you want me to then like execute on those um thoughts no you want me to write you a report or anything no just think so he leaves and okay i'm working for him so you spend a few minutes thinking and he comes back three minutes later and he goes here's um 50 million dollars okay so it sounds absurd right it's absurd in this in if you are talking about the the normal world but if you're in the world of torah and if hashem's your employer and i don't think you'll find this anywhere because even a think tank it gets paid to produce results and insights and research hashem pays us to think to have the right thoughts it's incredible no so that's who we are working for the greatest employer of all and that's by the way that's a huge emphasis that we're focusing on focusing on with cavanaugh mitzvos we're saying that if you rely your thoughts your intentions and your feelings and you think and feel the way hashem instructs you to the uh here let me give you an authoritarian source the safer in the bear halacha says that when you think about certain mitzvahs of the mind he says you cannot calculate the reward that weights you the the vacus and closeness you can get to hashem so we're paid for thinking now imagine you're back at the job and he says i want you to read the news or listen to the news now i'll qualify that in a second okay you say really he says yes i just want you to think about the news yes in a certain sense that's what hashem i am not saying that hashem says go read the news but i it whatever your policy and approach is we can't escape the news especially in the past few were years where the the world's been going crazy so you're going to hear news and then you may read news you may read from a good source a reliable source so that's what i'm talking about so believe it or not you're paid for how you think about the news so when we encounter the news hashem will pay us for how we think and feel about the news this brings us to part two of our series jews in the news the good the bad and the holy now many people said to me come on you mean the ugly don't you and we'll talk about the bad in the news the next time before right now we discuss the good and and we learn some incredibly important uh discoveries about how much good you can do when you hear about troubling news we can do cpr we said we can care we can empathize and feel the pain of the people that have suffered some tragedy god forbid care and then we can do prayer we can pray we can pray for them that we can reach out to hashem and pray and then we said repair because we we also taught that the reason the news is often bad news is because hashem wants us closer than we are he wants us thinking about them more and sometimes he has to stir us up because it's better that he gets our attention then let's everything go really nicely and we're not bonded okay so we said cpr you can that's good you can do certain good and i hope you tried it and now i tell you though what we designed and if you didn't see that class you should go back and look at it because really it's a quick scheme of care prayer prayer and repair that's the good tonight we're going to discuss the holy the w and that what we're doing right now is discussing how should we interpret the news and depending on the way you interpret the news you could do something that's very holy so let me explain many people if you ask them and i've asked many people where is your soul right so most of the people that i surveyed when i asked them a question they said it's probably in your heart and they're correct there is an aspect of the soul that's in the heart it's called the ruach but where is the main part of your soul with that's within you and i'm speaking about deep matters here it's in your brain as we say in the morning prayers we put the to fill in on our brain where our neshama our soul resides and let me go further and tell you how holy your mind is the rambam calls your mind the kardashian the holy of holies in the temple the most profoundly close connection you can get to hashem was in the holy of holies he says within the temple of your being your mind is a holy of holies at the kodash kadoshan and he even goes on to explain a gemara i think it's in yuma and it's shocking listen to what it says it says kasia here hora vera mina avera rubena yona brings this in charity it's listen to this translation worse in some ways worse is thoughts of sin than the sin itself i now that's very hard to understand and halachically it doesn't work that way in other words a person is punished let's say they steal or do some other act or they punch someone or something like that so that's worse than thinking about stealing or hurting or harming or miso inappropriate thoughts that is worse in the court down here but the rambam says in the world to come our thoughts of sin are worse than the sin and why is that because really really what distinguishes what distinguishes us from animals animals have legs and paws and arms so we have legs and paws and animals have bodies right but animals do not have a an ashama they don't have a brain that is the image of god they don't have this holy thing that's the holiest part of a human being so if you insert the wrong thoughts that's really worse than your your hand did that acted like an animal but you're holy of holies so you see now we can even understand why shem pays us so much for having the right thoughts and feelings too right so that's the thing holiness resides in your mind and holy witness resides in your thoughts and feelings and so now let's come to interpreting the news it could be an experience of holiness possibly it all depends on how we interpret the news so let's let's face it i i just want you know you know usually at klm we're the the discussing topics that are like lighter and happier and more joyous but i do think this is important you know we have to be in touch with reality and you know how they what they say they say no news is good news that certainly seems to be the case these days because the news has been really very bad news that's what we've been facing almost like like let's just take a look at right now you have a major war you have an economic crisis as a result of the war you have terrorism you have tragedies left and right that that's our news now how are we supposed to relate to the news now the first thing is this um like i said we're moving into delicate territory and when you start to think i i was going to ask you this you know why is it so hard to see the hand of hashem in the news the yacht of hashem the the divine providence right now so i want to say two reasons one is because it's a great mitzvah um to see hashem in these dark times if you can do that it's a great mitzvah so that's why it's hard because we always have to remind ourselves we never do mitzvahs in a vacuum and the yetzer hara wants to oppose us and he wants us to in misinterpret the news and go to the wrong place okay so we're facing but also let's be honest when we see all this suffering it's really hard for us to reconcile this with hashem uh our loving god that's a very difficult thing and a definite a difficult thing to experience so let me bring this out this is again we're going to go a little heavy tonight we have high volusion in nephi shahim he tells us the following thank god it's only a story there's a father who his son is on the roof of the house they had like flat roofs that you could walk on back in his times and the son is drunk and the father is going up the roof and he sees the sun by the edge of the thing and he falls down to the ground he's alive but he breaks every bone in his body right now then they take the son to the hospital and thank god he's alive but they have to reset the bones and the poor the father i mean of course the sun's in bad shape but the father is broken when he hears the sun screaming and shrieking etc but he but it's a different type of pain why because when he saw his son almost fall to his death that really shook him now he's rehabilitating and he still feels terrible about the pain right so what is how does um what rev high in the legend tries to explain to us is how does hashem feel about human suffering how does he relate to it so the thing is this the the the we're all here to connect to god and do good in the world right and when we stray and we we sin we are doing this really bad we're being very destructive and it's like the sun falling off the roof it's so destructive when we do sin and that's one of the reasons there's pain and difficulty is that's the hospital experience it it pains the father to see the child in pain but at least he's healing so that kind of perspective on the news that this suffering could be really a process of healing for people that's a thought that makes you holy if you have it okay and it's part of a mitzvah i'm going to discuss more in a moment and okay and that's yehudashem to realize that the creator um he the creator is good and he does good now but let's step back when you see people acting wickedly it's hard not to be filled with anger and hatred can that be holy can it be holy to be uh so angry at the dropping bombs on hospitals and things like you're furious and angry can that be holy it depends if you look at it as a set of random occurrences of course not but no no that's not my point if you just get caught up in the event and and you don't understand how hashem relates to it not much good right but ready the torah teaches us that o of a hashem see new raw it says in tahelm in psalms people will love hashem hate evil so guess what if you're if you see evil and it burns you up because you love hashem and you know this is completely against his plan and undermining the goodness he wants to shower on people that shows you love hashem so when you're feeling just burning up about the evil that's taking place say you know this i love hashem and i hate what's happening to his plan now let's just ask this we have just two more points and we're almost done with this let's just ask this question if hashem hates evil and by the way i didn't say evil people right everybody's hashem's creations he doesn't desire their destruction the evil people he desires then to come back to him right but he hates the evil right and we should hate it okay but now if hashem hates evil let me ask you a question why does he allow it right we have to deal with this every if if you're following my thoughts and you're receptive to it you're fulfilling the mitzvah of yehuda hashem so keep it in mind okay the answer hashem allows evil is because we're here for a very big purpose we were given free choice and the result of the our collective actions hashem allows for the evil there for us to be heroic rejected fight it and for the people who've made the mistakes to come back so there is there are reasons and so the all the things the bad news should can become holy if you reflect and you say why would a good god do this that's a mitzvah okay now the last point i want to make all right the last one is this is i want to finish with this idea of yehudashem where do we see this mitzvah the ramon explains it's when we say israel i don't have that mind right now because i'm before it shmai so we're saying hashem the creator who is our god and who is running the world who's supervising the world which is the mitzvah of ammunition he's he's one there's several explanations but the explanation we want now is hashem everything he does is for the good even though we can't possibly fathom how it's good now when we recite that right so you fulfill i have in mind the myth of shem zakhat and if everything's going well in your life and everyone else's life so you can say oh well hashem brings a lot of good it's it's it's an easy misfit in that sense right but you know with the news so bad today we have a chance to really develop our muscles and do this mitzvah in a heroic way who let's just take the the paradigm of a hero in this mitzvah rebbi akiva he was um he was had a brutal death at the hands of the romans who were killing all the righteous people where's hashem so he declared hashem's oneness even in a situation where it just made no sense and i i don't know that he understood you know it wasn't easy but he says i don't understand what's happening but i understand hashem and i understand hashem is good and loving so he must have a purpose that's ultimately good if you have this in mind you're fulfilling one of the most biggest and best myths as you can and that's yahood hashem so let's approach the news in a way that makes us holy [Music] is