Rebuilding From Nothing: The Superpower of the Jewish People - Rabbi Hillel Eisenberg

A Torah anytime original series. Perhaps the single greatest urban legend in the history of the land of Israel is that the Dead Sea is salty because Lot's wife who turned into a pillar of salt disintegrated into it. Now let's ask a question. Why in fact did Lo's wife turn into a pillar of salt? So, we all know the story. The city of Sudame fell so deep into moral decay that Hashem decreed its destruction. It just had to go. Yet, there was one inhabitant who although flawed, he merited salvation, and this was Lot. So, the angels tasked with destroying the city stopped off at Light's house to tell him to get out and get out fast. And as Light and his family were leaving, the angels warned him, "When you run, don't look back." Well, look back is exactly what Light's wife did and a human salt shaker she became. Now, this story begs a question. What exactly is so massively wrong with turning around for one second? What is the great harm in glancing backward and watching? What's the big deal? So, she stole a glance. Okay, it's not every day that a city is pummeled by a heavenly sulfur and firestorm. Why is it such a great sin, but that she stole a second to watch this historic apocalypse? Something that never happened before in world history and has never happened since. So I saw a powerful explanation by Rabba Vdar Miller. He says that the Tyra is telling us a fundamental principle in Shouva and growth and that is if you want to change, if you want to grow, you can't look back. If you want to grow up and better yourself and become more wholesome, you have to be a different person. You aren't the same person who ate too much. You aren't the same person who spent too much time on your phone. You aren't the same person who didn't learn enough or who spoke too much lashhara. To grow is to shed the past and begin a new. Allowing the past to linger in our basement hinders our development. You can't possibly become a healthier eater with fast food coupons in your pocket. You can't possibly be less attached to your phone when you're still subscribed to the same 347 WhatsApp statuses as before. You can't possibly be a new person if you still look to and befriend the bad habits of your past. Every gudle and great person by definition had moments in their lives where they had to shed their old sort of mediocre self and become bigger and better and larger than they previously were. It's so easy to become paralyzed by ourselves and remain set in our ways taking the path of least resistance in life. But the path to godless is to look forward and keep on climbing the ladder of life. Now I heard from my father-in-law mayor the rashiva of or in Atlanta a vart that demonstrates this idea brilliantly. He pointed out that a mitz someone who had to go upon completing his days of isolation outside of the camp he needs to go into the mikt to become. Now the problem was that tame people weren't allowed in the basikt. So how can someone who had saras go into the bas mikt to become pure if tame people aren't allowed in the bas. So to solve this problem, the kohanim would bring the mitsora into a special gate called shah niconor which was both part of the besa mikdash yet not charged with the same level of kadusha that would prohibit the mits from going there and that way he can be in the ba mikdash without fully being in it and that's where he becomes pure. This, my father-in-law pointed out, is symbolic of how the Tyra sees the chuva process. It wants people to go to a place where they feel like they don't belong. It wants people to go to a level of that they didn't think they could reach to raise oneself higher than what they previously thought they were capable of. By forever attaching ourselves to our past, we may be living a life of self-fulfilling prophecies about who we are and what we're capable of. Challenging ourselves and forever marching onwards makes us bigger and better servants of Hashem. Now listen to this. You ever wonder why Light's wife turned into salt of all things and not something else? like why not a big pillar of dust or a nice heap of garlic powder or I don't know a mountain of cayenne pepper. Why did she turn into salt of all things? The answer is because salt wasn't just a spice. It was power. You see, in the ancient world, salt was literally life itself. Salt was worth more than gold. Empires rose and fell because of salt. Roman soldiers were literally paid in salt. That's where the word salary comes from. Caravans crossed deserts just to trade it. Kingdoms built entire trade routes around it. Wars were fought over salt. In China, the first state monopoly was on salt. In Africa, slabs of salt were traded ounce for ounce with gold. Cities like Venice became rich beyond imagination because they controlled salt. Salt roots carved their way across continents from the Sahara Desert to the Silk Road. The Via Salaria, the salt road literally built Rome's economy. When Napoleon marched his army across Europe, one of his biggest challenges wasn't food. It was salt shortages that left his men weak and demoralized. And the reason salt was so important is because without salt, there was no way to preserve food. There's no way to survive the winter or to feed armies or to live off the land without salt. Salt was how you beat time. It was how you kept things from decaying. Salt was how you beat death. It was the technology of preservation in a world where everything else rotted away. So when Load's wife turned back, not just with her body, but with her soul, Hashem turned her into the very thing that symbolized her mistake. She wanted to preserve her old life, her old comfort, her old identity in Sudim. She couldn't let go of the past. So Hashem said, "You want to preserve yourself? Fine. You'll be preserved perfectly like meat packed in salt, unchanging, unmoving, frozen in the past forever. She became the ultimate metaphor, a living fossil of someone who refused to grow. It's a haunting image, but a powerful one because every time we look back and refuse to grow, we're doing the same thing. We're salting our own potential instead of letting it blossom into something new. Now, listen to this story. There was once a billionaire, his name was Glenn Sterns, who agreed to one of the wildest challenges ever put on television. He was approached by people who offered him the following challenge. They said, "We're going to take away your name, your money, your contacts, your status. You're going to be dropped off in a random city with just $100, a pickup truck, and a phone with no contacts. and you'll have 90 days to build a business worth $1 million. 90 days. So, he accepted the challenge and he suited up in some nondescript clothes and he was dropped off in the city of Eerie, Pennsylvania. Now, picture that. You've got a hundred bucks. You know, no one. You're in a city you've never heard of. What would you do first? So, most people would just start panicking. Where do I sleep? Where do I eat? But not him. The first thing Glenn Sterns did in Erie, Pennsylvania was walk down the street, go to the first stranger he met and asked him, "Where is the closest synagogue?" A synagogue. Of all the places he could have wanted to start, he chose to start with a synagogue. He wasn't Jewish, but something inside of him understood a secret that's ancient and eternal. If you want to rebuild your life from scratch, if you want to find people of depth, of vision, of discipline, you go where purpose lives, you go where people show up. You step into a shull. What ended up happening was on his way, he found a local gym and he spent 35 of his precious $100 on a month's membership, not to work out, but to surround himself with people who were working on themselves. And it worked. Within days he started meeting people who opened doors for him and he built connections and he earned trust and slowly dollar by dollar he built a barbecue restaurant that by the time COVID shut down the challenge two and a half years late two and a half months later it was valued at $750,000. And when they asked him later why he originally chose a synagogue, he said, "Because that's where you find people who are making positive changes in the world and that's how you start anything." That line hit me because that's us. We are the people who walk into the gym of the soul every day and we push ourselves to grow and to rise and to become more than we were yesterday. No one in all of world history has had to start over more than the Jewish people. No one in all of world history has had to leave behind their homes and their families and their livelihoods and their languages and their communities and step into a world completely unknown more than us. Throughout history, we've been dropped into new cities and new countries and new continents, stripped of everything we knew and everything we built and everything we loved. No one has been forced to rebuild from nothing time and time again in city after city and continent after continent more than the Jewish people. And yet every single time we rebuild, every time we take the fire, we carry the fire of Senai, the fire of our traditions, the fire of our values, and we plant it into the soil of our new land. And we take it and we nurture it, and we grow it, and we make it thrive. That's who we are. A nation forged in exile, a people who knows how to start over and make something extraordinary out of absolutely nothing. We are the masters of reinvention. The world champions of resilience. No one in history has had to reroot themselves as many times as we have. No one in history has been tested by the necessity of beginning again more than we have. And no one has done it with the determination and with the courage and with the vision of the Jewish people. We are the people who turn adversity into opportunity. We are the people who take fire and turn it into light and take ashes and somehow someway turn them into flames. We are the people who no matter where we're dropped. Whether in a tiny town, a massive city, a foreign land, or a strange continent, we always rise and we build and we grow and we thrive. We are the people who always find our way back. Back to Scha, back to Tyra, back to our values, back to each other. We are the people who never stop growing and never stop striving and never stop turning every challenge into a triumph. That's who we are and that's our legacy. That's our fire. A people who take every exile, every challenge, every new beginning and turn it into a force that changes the world. The angels were telling light, "Run for your lives and don't even glance back for a second because you are to leave here new people saved by the skin of your teeth. Grow, change, start a new." That's the correct way to change. It reminds me a little of how I used to view nila at the end of yum. I used to feel slightly dejected at the end of nila. The gates are shutting right in front of my face and I'm going to drive home from Shaw the same exact guy I was last year. The gates of heavens close right in front of my nose and I humbly walk home the same old me. But then I heard a perspective that changed my outlook entirely. The gates of heaven aren't closing in front of you. They're closing behind you. Hashem is urging us, quick, jump into my world and close the door behind you. Come through the gates and live with me. You'll love it here. You'll you're you'll be a new you. You'll live in my world. Nila isn't the end. Nila is the beginning. Nila isn't the gates sending you home. It's the gates ushering you into the garden of Hashem. It is you. Version 2.0. So don't be like Light's wife and look back. Look forward and step right through the gate to a whole new version of you.