Can We Be Idolaters Without Knowing It?

[Music] to say that any kind of obsession aside from from being obsessed with the Torah can be considered idolatry uh you're supposed to fall in love with AEM you're supposed to fall in love with anytime you give anything else more Mash more significance then the Torah then AEM it can be considered idolatry where do we learn this from we learn this from the meeting after 22 years between yobu and his son Yik you see in the par that says that after 22 years yob has been crying over a son for years for decades Because deep inside he knew that something's wrong he didn't die you're supposed to already stop mourning the dead after a year not just stop mourning but also sto the feeling gave us a gift of loss of memory so naturally a a person should have less of a feeling of Anguish after a year that's one of the gifts that hashm gave us but but yov felt the same anguish same pain after 20 years just like he did after 20 minutes of the loss of his son so now he's been waiting for him and crying for him for 20 plus years and finally he sees him he goes to MIM after the uh the brothers tell him that he's there he's the visero he's the second in command in Egypt and yov comes to see his son and he sees his son in power and it says in the par that YF hugged yov but it doesn't say that yov hugged YF hug you've been crying over him for years why don't you hug him give him a nice Middle Eastern Busa kiss on the cheek or something no nothing why say the moment that yov saw his son he felt so much passion and compassion for his son and he was so happy that he stopped himself for a moment he says wait a minute Shalom that I'm gonna have that much passion that much love for anything other than so at that moment while his son is hugging him he said meaning AEM only you all of this passion all of this love only belongs to you doesn't belong to my son doesn't belong to my wife doesn't to anybody yeah but you've been crying for him over 20 years mistake all that belongs to all that belongs to that moment his son is hugging him he's not hugging him back why he says no one no one is allowed to have so much of my heart no one and we see many theim see many followed followed Feinstein Shalom they I told you guys a story a couple of weeks ago they asked him one time how come he stands so still like a like a pillar when he's praying he says one time a uh kak put a gun to his head and said if you move I'm going to kill you and he says I was so afraid that he's going to kill me I literally didn't move but then realized that this feeling of fear and trepidation for what just losing my body for this kak big deal that feeling only belongs to I should only be afraid of a like this so from that moment on every time I talk to that's how I am I'm afraid deadly afraid every time he's he's praying every time he's praying he's talking to and he stood just like that as if has a gun to his head because he's talking to you see that emulated the ones before them so you are supposed to love your wife love your husband love your children love everybody no problem but nothing nothing in the world takes precedent over nothing nothing not even anything so it's it's a and the only time time that you're allowed to put the Torah a um not a side but the Torah gives you permission permission to say let's say for example a white lie is for the sake of schom it's not that you are violating the Tora for the sake of slom the Tor allows you you're following the Torah for the sake of slom there are different intricate in details within this but generally speaking you are never ever allowed to love or care about anything in the world more than if you do it can be considered at the very least the dust of not but the dust of meaning it's the feeling it's the sensation it's the look it's the smell it's almost it's almost and it can be and that's what's happening actually with with some people that are idolizing their Rabbi living or dead idolizing their uh something and it becomes many people's treatment of money is 100% the way they treat money and how obsessed they are with money 100% sometimes even people how they treat their phone the way they treat their phone how obsessed they are with their phone they lose their phone I can't do anything what okay buddy relax I understand you got your whole life and business and stuff but it's just a phone in in a few hours you get a new one and tomorrow you get a new one it's not it's not God it's not like God went on vacation you're Godless right now it's just a phone okay it's fine understand inconvenient I don't like it either but take it easy they lose their mind they lose their cool they lose everything so at the very least it's if not but uh sometimes the way women shop for clothes they go spend said women go spend six eight hours looking for a dress he says at the very least it's he was he 6 hours looking for one dress you know how much you could achieve in 6 hours okay fine you want to shop change this that an hour two hours 6 hours so anytime that you've made something more significant where it's pretty much surpasses your value of the Torah it becomes very very problematic isn't that like almost every majority of the moments of majority of the people religious not religious that are that are living it's almost like as though as as if you're not spending every moment to sanctify hashem's name to love a then it's like it's going to lead almost toar some point so you're saying what T says page four I think it's a but it may be B uh says that if you did not find a way to sanctify A's name today it was better off you didn't come to the world meaning if you didn't find a way to sanctify K's name every day find a way to better you didn't come to the world why what's your purpose what's your purpose now we always hear when there's a there's a and they say that wanted to bring Merit to so he gave them a lot of what does it mean another uh uh understanding could be that he wanted to give Merit to am is by keeping them busy with constant mitv because each one of those mitv when you fulfill it in the name of hem is a way to sanctify K's name it's a way for you to constantly think about a oh you are about to have water you going to do blessing or not oh if you do a blessing why you doing blessing you think ofm it's a way of sanctifying his name oh you can learn to you can do a blessing before you learn to or no oh you know the better mikdash was destroyed because they didn't bless the Torah before they learned oh you didn't know okay now you not only learned but you also did a blessing and so on and so forth every single thing every single thing you benefit in the world every single thing you benefit in the world you find there is a blessing for it is's a way to sanctify K's name for it and that way you're constantly busy living your life while sanctifying name you don't have to stop your life and everybody in the world become an that would be mashia days but you could live your life Torah says you could live your life you could go to work you could uh pick up boxes you could drive a car you could uh I don't know drive a ship or something you do whatever it is that you're doing as long as it's a kosher job but remember a in whatever it is that you're doing you're eating remember to do a blessing remember that it has to be a kosher food remember that you're only allowed to eat in this place and not in that place if there's a dead body don't eat next to it don't eat next to it why because the dead body is there dead body is there and you're eating the dead body still there's a there and then you're going to cause it suffering that it can't eat and you're eating so this is a simple that if you dealt with the dead you realize I have to know okay so even eating I can't eat next to the dead body yeah but I have to be a sh when somebody's uh dead somebody died and you you can't be buried at that time you have to is or the really is that you have to have somebody there have to have somebody there could be a man could be a woman ideally a man but what about okay you have to go to eat at some point says you can't eat next to him so what you do okay go to next room go to next room point is is that there's all these little intricate details of how to live your life like a regular person but still remembering AEM along the way all of the T all of theim all of them did did something they didn't necessarily all just learn all the time they all did something you know they sold shoes they made shoes they were uh they seed stuff they uh you know there all types of professions there were doctors and so on and so forth no one is saying don't work and just be an a from morning toight and that's the only way that you can go to heaven no one is saying that you can be that would be fantastic that like a dream but for most people it's not a reality not necessarily just because they don't have the uh the to do it and the belief that who will send them the the financial uh Power to do it but also because a lot of people are just don't have the uh the mental capacity the mental capacity just sit there for 12 14 hours learning some people you know they could listen to a sh for three hours but you give them a book 3 minutes or they could listen they could learn a book but for three hours for 14 hours H you're a little crazy enough okay so you can be B you could work and you could study there's no problem with that no one says that you have to study fulltime all the time just study a set amount of time every day you get to the T and learn it in the morning and at night you make time for it in the morning you make time for it at night the rambam says that you should study the majority of your Torah at night and if it didn't say learn it day and night we would literally only study at night and never in the morning because the tah that you learn at night is to that you get your real wisdom from that's where you get your real wisdom from so much so the ra says if anybody understood the magnitude of learning to at night they would never waste a single night on eating sleeping drinking or doing anything mundane other you know other than just learning toah that's how valuable to is at night but again if you have a day job if you have a day job and that day job requires you to go there 9:00 in the morning you learning all night every it's not possible why you have to wake up in the morning you have to go to work and you can't tell oh no I studied to so that's why I'm sleeping on a job that doesn't work then you're stealing because the guy's paying you not to sleep he's paying you to work so again everybody has to be a grownup and evaluate themselves but you're 100% encouraged not just allowed encouraged to live your regular life work do but keep AEM in mind keep hem in mind and if you do that you'll see that is literally at the tip of your tongue all day you're doing blessing before you eat you decide whether this deal that you're doing is kosher or not you decide whether to make this uh Arrangement or not you decide whether to go uh to a place or not because there's certain people that are empty and certain people that are for you decide how to pick all types of things if you have the mind if you have a t constantly in your your mind every decision that you make throughout the day has that you know as as part of the consideration it's not something the Torah is not something you think about only when you're learning the Torah is a something that's constantly on your mind that you make your decisions based on what the Torah says not necessarily based on what your desire says the average person makes their decisions based on what they want someone that wants to comply with the Torah and wants to go to makes the decisions based on what the T says has nothing to do with what they want or not first is is it allowed or not allowed then I'll decide whether I want to or not then I'll decide whether I want to or not the average ignoramus is going to decide what do I want is it allowed what do I want he decides what he wants and then decide is it allowed or not allowed why why is that a problem if you decide is it allowed not allowed according to the Tor and then decide whether you want it or not that means that you've already look at things based on what T's mindset A's mindset allowed not allowed not allowed okay I'm not even considering whether I want it or not it immediately gets rejected at the door but if I decide whether I like it or not and then review whether it's allowed or not I'm already Naga I'm already biased why I like it it's delicious I I already taste tasting it I'm already smelling it I already see myself doing it it already becomes harder to say no so what do you do you be manipulate the to find a way to make the pig allowed you find a way to make a leniency you know it's not allowed but I like it so how could I make it allow is there a way Rabbi to make it allowed like somebody asked me the other day is there a way to make it allowed to do such and such I said no yeah but this Rabbi said it's allowed oh I don't know Rabbi or uh Smurf I don't know what this guy is but it's not allowed but is there a way to make it all no there's no way to make it allow but how come he said it I don't know I can't speak for him I can't speak for him I can't speak for everybody I can tell you what's allow it's not allowed so that's why it's ideally our uh goal should be to find a get ourselves to a point where one day we are reviewing Things based on allowed not allowed based on the toah and then decide whether we like it or not that's the ideal that's the sadik that's it's not always that way it doesn't always necessarily work that way but that's the ideal way to do it anything else [Music]