When People Become Monkeys | Shloshim Hesped for Rabbi Dr. Moshe Dovid Tendler

the yeshiva.net [Music] it's a great cover for me to call on rav joseph yitzhak jacobson otherwise known as y yy rabbi why why jacobs and to share dibbly hospital thank you very much robert avagonia bruv and feinstein's little emperor the entire prominent distinguished tender mishpache the children of course in-laws grandchildren the friends and of course this extraordinary community synagogue there is a startling and quite intriguing madrish madhuri shrabba kahelas a madrish on kahella's ecclesiastes where the medrash says that human life consists of two fours seven errors when a child is born hareyo kamela when a child was born he or she is treated like a king or a queen everybody wants to hold them everybody is taking pictures everybody wants to know how much he weighed right remember what color here what color eyes looks like mommy looks like tati looks like nobody looks like the eltaba two years old i quote to madrid for giving me hareu ke khazer he's basically looking for every dirty place in the house if there's a sewer system if there's a cesspool the child is there if there's ice cream it has to be spread on the couch and the new couch the white couch benesi turns ten are you kidding now he's like a goat he's jumping a flit a hack he's a wild goat an untamed mountain goat perhaps benestrom he turns twenty arreyo jesus like a horse grooming himself making sure he's creme de la creme a handsome young man to be able to find the great sugar that's what the madrid says like a horse wants to be powerful looking handsome and appealing and then you get married and of course he becomes the donkey somebody got to pay the bills somebody got to work for a living ash slept and schlepped and schlepped he's slapping you get a little older barak hashem the family grows and the tuition grows mothers doesn't speak about the tuition but now the bills are astronomical hareo kikelev now he needs the chutzpah of a dog barking trying to get money just to make ends meet finally his skin he becomes a zucchini are you cafe he turns into a monkey or a chimpanzee or a gorilla but here the madrid doesn't explain why i get the king i get this swine i get the goat i get the horse i understand the donkey i understand the dog but why the chimp why the monkey so the normative interpretation of mafashim of commentators is monkeys imitate people they project they imitate each other as well when you become a zeta now you have to start making circus shows entertainment displays for the eight o'clock you want the grandkids to come to zadie and bubby and enjoy themselves in addition to all the sugar and other healthy things you give them zaydi needs to stand and make tricks like a monkey to entertain them okay forgive my call for a banacha mendel morgenstern one of the great luminaries of poland 19th century says something else he says many people when they become older they become they begin imitating you know who they imitate they imitate themselves i have lived so for 40 50 60 70 years i'm not about to rethink my life i become an imitation of myself i darwin today because i dive in yesterday and 60 years before i should start now i should quit min of chakras i do shabbos i do pesach i do i brush my success every day i do my jewish thing every day no vibrancy there's no creativity hareuk you start imitating yourself i become bored of myself i become a monotonous human being there's no freshness anymore there's no histachus continues a king is independent a real king an aristocrat a monarch a royal person at heart doesn't imitate you set the agenda you're a trailblazer you're a leader you're not a victim his skin are you kidding it's the courage to reinvent yourself it's the courage to be a real authentic person is and for me just this interpretation captures at least one angle one dimension of the great nifter who we come tonight lispoid velifkois in the words of this paraship to remember to immortalize to internalize haravagon his skin life was fresh creative not an imitation of other people and not even an imitation of himself what do they say all people die originals i'm sorry all people are born originals most of us die as copies raftendler was born an original like everybody he also died in original he remained an original some people argued with his originality that's what happens with original people but he remained true to his originality i once heard from him and for me it was moving he said that one of the great nights of his life you know he didn't like drama he appreciated a good joke but in like he said one of the great nights of his life it was in 1970 and he was being criticized very heavily by certain people in the holy land on issue over shahrit sadiq hospital in jerusalem it's before my days brother-in-law must remember one of the stories he was thinking of moving to israel but he was afraid because with such zealotry you know what type of cabela's partner is he going to get in the airport is it going to be a red carpet or is it going to be something else you know skills rafa heritage malcus he was hesitant and generally he was a younger man then and it's not comfortable to be criticized right we all know that it's nicer to finish at russia and get a compliment than to get criticism now it's not the meaning by eden to give compliments that's true if you look at the tanakh the only navi who got a compliment was jonah because he spoke to goyan all right the only guy everybody else you know they wanted to kill him yo you know was a smart guy he went to the gentiles they love it beyo de omakira come in the present company excluded rabbi tendler trained you well well you have to know me minigestrol toyrahu you know you don't compliment that best you give a little your and also not too dramatic so nobody should think you can ask them for a favor the next day and he said that he was invited he went to visit then he was in he went to visit the laboratory and he spent there a night they spoke about biology he said ninety percent of the time you know rabbi tender like to say the truth about themselves he said i have to tell you in biology i knew everything he spoke about physics he was ahead of me physics he was ahead of me but at the end he said he spoke to the lobby chief about his predicament and he shared the words i want to quote the laboratory ever told me it's not the jewish way to make a decision out of fear you can't live your life afraid of somebody don't think too much of what others will say if you're sure you're right do what you have to do you have to be an independent human being your answer to hashem this is even true in the way we serve god it became a guiding directive for him and his life he never became that chimpanzee he never became that monkey there was no social conformity there was freshness creativity as rosh yeshiva as ashvagelita said no preconceived notions i don't even imitate somebody else great person i want to know marshmallow right now or maybe as put it best in ruach in the first chapter when ghazal teach us may your home become a home filled with torah filled with sages how do you translate it of english literally miss abek rabbi zaks i need your help what did rabbi yaria kaplan say huh nobody here in this show nobody could translate misabic in english okay the heaven the heaven is means literally you should entangle yourself in the dust of their feet spend time in the dust of their feet and drink their words with thirst but says miss abek comes from the word in vayishlach is means to wrestle to battle to quarrel to confront his abcos a man wrestled with yaakov till dawn break the heavy misabic says incredibly powerful idea you have to be able to have the courage to quarrel with your teachers with the sages with the people you respect but by pharah glam always with a profound sense of humility the nafshikaful occultia if it becomes about pride arrogance hubris narcissism selfishness nazcanas is easing god out you lost the plot the heavy miss abek because you're searching for truth you're searching for ms and emma's infinite terrorist hashem to me the jews have been nibbling on for thirty three hundred years i don't think there's anything left it's like sushi by the kiddush after thirty three hundred years of torah tamima nagabo adam it's untouched how can you say this because it's infinity and infinity you can have one a million a billion you don't get closer to infinity even if you have a hundred billion because infinity by definition is ain't safe therefore have a misabic i'm looking for the truth and i want to fight for the truth with absolute courage and resolve but by far raglan always appreciating the need for humility the need for bitter the appreciation and the ultimate absolute respect for my teacher and this unique fusion not so common today i think we saw in the life in every sheer lecture seminar workshop powerpoint presentation and certainly the regular shiurim and shula and yeshivas and in all this year around the world by the great nifter heart of tender without fear without reservation have a misabic he believed as both rasheshiva is brought out beautifully you have to maximize your potentials to the greatest greatest measure never to surrender to mediocrity not only do it but do it best master a good joke so forgive me yogi berra's wife once asked him you're laughing already you don't even know what happened but you know it's going to be funny right yogi berra's wife once asked him if she said yogi tayata yogi i have a big dilemma i have a suffolk here's the problem you were born in missouri you live in new jersey but you play for the new york yankees where should i bury you he looked at her and said surprise me there's two ways of living there are people who don't surprise anybody and they don't surprise themselves either rabbi tender believed in surprising yourself laughter comes only from the unexpected says the balatanya from the surprises in life from the fact that i don't want to imitate myself i think there was something else that characterized his leadership his teachings his persona it's what ramirez shapiro the rubliner of the founder of da fiomi once told arov who came to him for advice this is of course pre-war poland and it was parshas kisi said he opened up and he said it's all right here moshe asks hashem i want to see you and the ribena shalom says [Music] it's one of those extremely mystical and mysterious there's a space with me and you stand on the rock but when my glory passes i will place you and hide you in the cleft of the wrath said may shapiro and i think raftendles was a living embodiment of this he said every year of will encounter two different situations in life he named makoiti there are situations there are spaces that are connected to me there are mikhaimas where i am where my presence is on the line vinitsaft then your role is to stand on iraq like a rock with unwavering conviction absolute commitment because it's and he told if it's a question of yuri shamayim if it's a question of hinduja bonneville bonus of educating a new generation if it's a question of tyra sabai's purity of the home holiness of the home holiness of a future generation if it's a question of mikvy or kashmiris or shabbos if it's a question of hine mokko and eti vinnit stand on a rock like a rock not because you're arrogant but because you were chosen to be a conduit [Music] to be a spokesman for hashem with humility with love but with inner confidence and strength for how above work voidy what a good advice for rabbis rabbi leibowitz tell me if you agree about work voidy once my covet is gone now the samtika bin nikra satsur now you could also go into hiding the dafstar zen the daftness heading once the question is the wallpaper in the shoe the kiddish is going to be with kiklach or jalapeno herring or plain herring you know that shul's debate is rabbi french and in the lower east side they still have these debates too i thought the lower side was immune because of the impact of your great father once it becomes my personal honor once it becomes my personal ego insecurity issues we all have issues [Music] with something you could be a little deaf you could be a little blind don't make things personal be a leader don't be reduce yourself to insecurity don't reduce yourself to pettiness to smallness your job in this world is to bring out the best in people by being bringing out the best in yourself that unique fusion that unique combination very rare i think so many of us saw and admired in hagon if i may say one more point about him and that is in yiddish there's a word breit in english we call it broadness expansiveness we live in a world of tremendous learning and we have to thank hashem for this i was right before corona and the colorado and the yeshiva shiva's ref kagan talmud of iron and he tells me we were standing there at the reception and he starts sobbing aid starts crying and he tells me i heard from rebellion mayor bloch that tells her who told me that in 1942 he was walking in the lower east side of manhattan and there was an altaid who was america's farm he was a european jew he sold sodom what parnasso he made to midway in 1942 but he sold for him and he sold books also it's one of those guys that you tried to help them by buying a safer you know it's not like you needed the savior you just knew the guy needed khalifa shabbas and the believer block passes this jew and the jew says for a quarter i'm going to sell you a precious book and he gives him a and he tells them these words in yiddish this is the let's take sauce in america this is the last sauce that's going to be sold on the shores of the united states of america hold on to it cherish it don't discard it this is going to be a timeless antique and i'm giving it to you for a quarter because nobody's going to buy it and ravik hagan told this to me and he was just sobbing and i understood why he was sobbing he was both sobbing because of it's an emotional story but he's also sobbing from the joy of the miracle of transformation and rabbit handler was born in 1925 right your father 1925 in the lower east side saw saw that transition saw that transformation firsthand lived it breathed it celebrated it contributed to it fought for it i have to say it was a sad moment one of the greatest moments that they has paid them at the levaya was when the rashi shiva abruvenschlitz said that he had a dream he wanted to become a chicken farmer you heard that i didn't know that i want to know now what was your father's dream what was the zayd's dream wasn't that great he wanted to be on a farm we still have in muncie those farms and raise chickens you would run the kapodas out of him kipper in the hasidic neighborhoods here and his brother-in-law rabbi tendler didn't scream at him didn't rebuke him he just explained to him that in an era of the 1940s early 19th i assume the late 1940s what we need are spiritual doctors soul doctors teachers jews who cherish judaism are going to inspire a new generation well the results are obvious thank god for that conversation with your brother-in-law but it's always good to know what rabbi's real dreams are and you probably hear it in their speeches and they're sure even without freudian analysis why am i talking about the chicken farm oh he celebrated it but sometimes people learn and let's call it tunnel this tunnel vision very very narrow a lot of narrowness it's called celebration of narrowness and the more narrow i can be somehow the more holy it feels it never felt right to me just doesn't make sense it doesn't fit in with our hammer eritsmida or niyam we heard the rambam and you say that if the divine is at the core of every atom and every cell and every genome and every neuron and every nook and cranny of existence and that's just in the sciences and in the physics wherever you turn in the micro and the macro the wisdom the brilliance the intricacy is astounding terror which is the blueprint for creation which is the makar habriya's where is the infinity of torah the expansiveness of terror that encompasses everything well i loved hearing asheville by tender you saw that expansiveness again the freshness the creativity even those power points presentations i remember he once explained hassaya fahad say for your ducruz as the double helix of the dna molecule now people don't know about the double helix of the dna molecule usually don't know about how safe of a hassai if you are not and people who know about this don't often know how to speak about the helix of the dna molecule well for some of us for many of us it was extremely refreshing to be able to learn over judaism that is never never afraid not only to confront every modern question but to become the blueprint the divine blueprint that navigates the human being in the 20th and 21st century through the most cutting edges developments in every area of life of course science and biology and physics and never mind cosmology and astrophysics and today psychology and quantum mechanics and the convergence of all of it and to be able to understand that the terror is that blueprint the road map for every great dilemma and great question you don't have to run here and you don't have to run there in the two extremes asafoetida he and he's learning and he interrupts his learning and he says wow what a beautiful tree what a splendid landscape you're endangering your soul and the commentators can't understand a jew is taking a hike on the bear mountains khaki at park landscapes we have here in rockland county or anywhere in the world are you learning you're learning maybe you're listening to a sheer maybe you're thinking about something you're schmoozing with a friend with a child with a caruso and suddenly you see an extraordinary landscape when you stop and you say how beautiful how splendid you're endangering your life are in the bracha is that our sages instituted in the sector unnatural phenomena royal is a whole chapter dedicated and many more what's messiah of benafsha there's an answer i once saw i don't know the original author of the answer maybe the rash yeshiva will tell me afterwards i saw this years ago unbelievable answer he said it's one word you're hiking you're learning you interrupt the learning and you say how beautiful is this tree for me to extol the beauty of god's world is an interruption of learning there's no singular continuum but the insight of yiddish kaidos says literally it means if we make kiddush here we have to start having the meal here spiritually it means ain't kiddish is not abstract transcendent heavenly celestial segregated it informs and enlightens it sublimates it elevates the feast of life the material and physical of life there's no math [Music] the presence of the reborn of shalom saturates fills vibrates through every elon through every near it's not an interruption of torah it's the manifestation of torah in a real concrete world lawyers was the embodiment of that statement it's actually a brisk of earth but i heard it from the laboratory and he said and i quote he was saying aseam on aseamanhulen by the jewish people messages which means the mundane the royal it's not the car bonus of the same it's also insane because ain't kiddish is not only in the heavens kedusa is the ultimate reality of the entire cosmos and therefore the cooling of life is just another way of manifesting kochim behold in closing may i conclude with an insight i saw by your grandfather shiva's father by rav tendless shivers these words which i think represent the fourth and final point i would like to make at this special evening hashem blessed aram with everything beautiful line i think the passage makes sense he blessed them with everything whatever a person can ask for the man had kumara says in baba bastar the end of the first pedic is the numerical value of 50. lamid and haf nun bays 50 and two it's the numerical value of a son babe he gave him a child and the child was 40 and he didn't have a shidduch asks rep moisha agutakash i don't understand so just write vashem okay youtube is too long just write biben bakoyl and baben is exactly the same amount of letters tara likes to be brief i got it not like rabbis fine if you could say it short don't say it long got it why do i need a bacon now i need a gematria just say it it's not like we don't know about youtube great question oh you probably heard it live from your father so that moishes are talented says that the turtle doesn't write but ben kuzu would lose the point the terrorist says he gave him everything now hazal come and tell you what does it mean to have everything what does it mean to have everything [Music] well we all have our answer for that come quezon say i'll tell you what it means to have everything it means to have a child because there are people who have everything but their children are estranged and they have nothing [Music] and there are people who have nothing but they have a child who's attached who's connected and they have everything you could say hashem blessed him with a child you missed the point he blessed them with everything because i'll say you know what forevrum was everything and don't underestimate it's not like a rama garnish avram is a world leader a prince of god he was a religious revolutionary he was the first monotheist he says that he and sorry changed half of human civilization of the time the rambam avoided described traveling from city to city country to country holding press conferences and lectures the first one to talk about avraham avinu fought wars avraham avinu was the greatest host of a generation abraham avina was the greatest teacher the greatest mayman the greatest bomb mister is nephesh a soreness and even the benefit you're a prince you're a melee such a person could look at his resume and say not so bad and you look today tender used to say people the bible fabricated he says just look at the psukim you had to be an idiot to write these things if you weren't god here's a little guy acclaimed who commanded no army who i owned barely territory when sarah died he had nothing despite all the promises and whoever authored this book says by the way every nation on earth is one day going to see you as the source of blessing 2021 you see close to half of human civilization considers themselves spiritual ears of avramavinu pretty powerful legacy for one man comes the turd and says but you know what favrah meant everything he had a child he had a child yitzhak who not only followed avramovino but became an embodiment tyra delay became an embodiment in his own unique inimitable way me the sakura pachad that was the bachoil this is the commentary of rib he said it he said it in yeshiva he didn't have to say it he didn't have to say it that's the point when i look at the children of ravthendler when i look at the homies pacha i see that hashem berakes a busy man medical ethics genetics the lebanese life creative scientific successful productive scholarly topsail and yeshiva and top lectures in the secular scientific community in colombia uchiva college and around the world but he understood what often people don't understand that the ba coil by eden is the attachment to your children the way he invested in his children i saw how the children spoke about him during shiva i saw how they emailed me about him you see sometimes professors rash yeshivas they're big they're brilliant but the children at the end say he wasn't my father you know he was just sure loved him but in the house you know i'm not going to be married on this but trust me it's a phenomenon in fact some very successful rabbis are so successful because they run away from the house and they spend in seoul you know poi te li no se pai but in the house but when it comes to purim how does the rambam end it he says the kind god will finish that and what did he do when yom kippur was over went home flagging them unfortunately this is a halacha of course he went home if kipra is over where should he go to the bowling alley where should the coin go to go with sodium kipper for pizza what do you want of course you go a good takashi i know he went home it's a fact but the rambam puts it in the shot is it i heard from my rabbit that it's when you're going to kaido shakodashim it's very easy not to go home you go home and you know what your wife tells you yeah take out the garbage excuse me i was in kaido sakadarsham today listen my dear just take out the garbage i had a harder day than you you weren't going to shake it doesn't mean i was with your kids and makmashiga which is harder i don't know i know the terrorist was hard but your 11 kids are harder my dear coin god do me a favor take out the garbage and make dinner for yourself well in the secular world the rock stars they come home to such a wife they can't deal with it the rambam gives if you can go home if you can sit down on the ground and play handball with your child thank you the women understand thank you for the feedback they're all going to go home afterwards i promise you we're not letting anybody stay over tonight we're sending them all home tender was a man of the world he was a colorful man he had a universal scope and universal vision but he knew that the great duty of a father of a mother is to go home and raise a generation that continues that legacy with love and with passion and as his entire family is doing until the great moment when mullah or its day is when that unity will be revealed in the whole world amen thank you thank you this class is brought to you by the yeshiva.net please help us continue the classes make even a small contribution at www.theyoshiva.net donate