Fixing Unesaneh Tokef

Hi, this is David Olowski with a new program from the Rabbi Olowski Show and that is we are answering all of our listeners questions as much as we can in little shorts to be able to try to catch up on the backlog of questions that we have that has been accumulating over the years. Quite a few in fact. Um, as always, if you would like to sponsor an entire episode or a para in five or one of these questions and answers, please go to my website, revolowski.com, and click on the sponsor button to sponsor any of these uh different things that we're doing because we need your support to keep doing this kind of wonderful programming. Okay, anonymous writes, I listened to why be Jewish many times and I now have trouble with anat since what even is pestilence keeps running through my head. Can you please rebuild anat for me? Yeah, this is a common problem. For those who are not familiar with the uh anonymous's question, um probably my first go-to talk when I'm talking to a new audience is called why be Jewish? And uh it's basically an introduction about why a person should be Jewish today. And it's more or less based on the first two lines in Masil's hasharim about what life is all about and why we're here. And I begin by eliminating all of the other reasons that people give till I get to the real one, right? And one of the things I go through is people say, "Well, you got to be, you know, Jewish. You got to be religious or you're going to burn in hell." And I spend some time building that up because I would like to eliminate that as a possibility. That's not why you should be Jewish. And I say, I understand where it's coming from, right? Rashan kipper is a very heavy time and it seems to give us this attitude. I said it's summed up best in that nana tof you know you're a kid and I was a kid you go to shul and the kazin says oh me and we understood what he was saying might live but you're going to die and the choir goes die. And I'm like, "Oh man, I'm gonna die. What a bummer." But now you get to pick the way you're gonna go. Who by fire and who by water? Fire's pretty bad. I could probably tread water for a while, you know. Who by sword and who by storm? Oh, storm's not so bad. You know, I saw the Wizard of Oz, you know. Who by earthquake and who by pestilence? I don't know what is pestilence. Never heard of anyone dying of We'll take the pestilence, Bob. >> [laughter] >> That's the routine and the whole thing was there to illustrate that unfortunately a lot of people uh that this is their Judaism you know so what is the downside of that most often I don't ever answer that particular question I just go on to my next point because I'm just trying to eliminate this you know hellfire theory of Judaism yeah and I tell the story I told you I was talking to a group of you Shiva guys and I said you know there's no fire there's no devils no pitchforks right because you're a soul you can't burn a soul and one guy says don't tell that to me it's the only reason I get up in the morning go to shul I said okay we'll open up a special section for you [laughter] but of course it leaves it afterwards with the the question hey hang so now because it is late sinus let's be perfectly uh accurate of what that whole routine is And when you laugh at something you have trouble looking at it seriously. So now unfortunately when people go to and they start seeing the they start chuckling to themselves pestilence you know. So it uh it of course has that negative effect. So what is my read of the Yeah. on it's written and on it is sealed. Who will live and who will die? Ask for des but you see it's not true because there are rishim who live every year and they don't die in rash. They don't die in yamiper but they're clearly rashim. So he gives the answer. The kazal say this you can take a look at rashi the beginning of he talks about it a number of places even when they're dead are called alive and rashim even when they're alive are called dead and says deslim die on rashim kippa they're just not going to be buried for another 30 40 years but their life is already over. So we look at naratf and we say to ourselves the following take a good look at your life and decide what kind of life you want to live because you're going to be judged on rash and that judgment is going to be sealed on yam kipper and think what you want very carefully you want to be alive or you want to die. I know it sounds like a stupid question, but trust me, I know a lot of people who are just staying alive through inertia. They don't want to be alive. They don't want anything to be alive for. And that's where their greatest delight is sleep. Sleep is death. You want to just be asleep. You want to miss life. Yeah. Cuz what do they got to live for? So they play on their phone or they watch movies or they find something else to distract them and keep them busy till they go in the ground. But why do you want to be alive? What do you want to be alive for? What do you want to accomplish? And so in Russash we say who's going to become rich and who's going to become poor? Because unfortunately there are some people if they become rich they grow complacent and they just spend their money and there are some people who become poor become bitter you know and say I have an excuse now and the ideal is that a bar gives us money to be able to do things with it and if I want to be an ashir and take care of Israel you have that option but you better think what do I want yeah who will be at peace and who will be persecuted. Some people like to be persecuted. I know it sounds almost ridiculous, but people like it. These are the people who don't do anything until the last minute because they work better under pressure. And when everything is calm and they got they they do nothing. They need all the aggravation. And we see people die, fire, uh, uh, floods. Yeah. They get killed in war. Yeah. All of that's decided today because decide what life you want because everyone lives the life that they have chosen. At the end of the day, you don't realize it. There's a fascinating little book called Illusions by Richard Bach. And basically there are these two all powerful uh cosmic beings and one of them came down to earth and wanted to see what it was like to be a human and he forgot who he is and his friend comes to rescue him and he just looks at this guy and thinks he's crazy. So they're passing by a movie theater and they're playing Butch Cassie and the Sundance Kid which he says is my favorite movie. I said come on let's watch. And I'm so into the movie. And as we get towards the end, they're trying to decide the last final scene. It's very dramatic. He turns to me and says, "Why are you here?" And he says, "I'm watching the movie." He says, "I know, but why are you here?" He says, "I'll talk to you when the movie's over." Yeah, but why are you here? He says, "I told you I'll talk to you later." So after the movie's over and we go outside, I said, "Why was that so important to you to ask me that question now?" and he said, "You know that's not real. It's just light flickering on the screen." Right? Uh Paul Newman and uh Robert Redford are not dead. They're living in Hollywood. They're doing very well. They have careers. They have families. Everything's fine. But you wanted to lose yourself in that illusion. And that's what this world is. It's an illusion. And you choose the makeelieve that you want. He says, "But what about people who have horrible lives?" He says, "Those are the people who go to horror movies and that's the lives that they've chosen." So we say in the sanf, I don't want those lives. I want the good life. And if God has decided that the only thing that's going to work on me is negative reinforcement. So I'm going to dive into Hashem and show I'm going to work on my spiritual relationship with God. And I'm going to give stuck and I'm going to work on my uh relationship with other people and help people who are less fortunate. And chuva I'm going to work on my relationship with myself so that hopefully I can be happy with who I am. I hope that uh helps to give a little insights into the satan tok the way that I understand it. Uh remember we need sponsors for this to be able to keep it going. And that's it. Until next time, I am David Olowski.