The Best Musician By Rabbi Hillel Eisenberg

[Music] Do you know who the single greatest musical composer of all time is? The single greatest musical composer of all time was a man named Lewig van Beethoven. Beethoven's music has been played at every concert hall in the world. His music was talked about and listened to and danced to perhaps more than any other single person in the history of humanity. He has the most instantly recognizable music on the planet. Beethoven is considered to be the most impactful and successful composer in world history. Now, here's the most incredible part. Beethoven was deaf. Yes, you heard that correctly. The single greatest composer in the history of the world was deaf. He could not hear the music he was playing. Beethoven while living in Vienna in the early in his early 20s, he began slowly losing his ability to hear. After several years, he went deaf completely. Beethoven at that point, he was having a decent career. He was giving concerts here and there. But the moment he went deaf, he completely removed himself from public life out of embarrassment. I mean, what good is a composer and a musician that can't hear? So Beethoven, he ran off. He lived in a shack on a hill in the Austrian mountains. He was broken. He was depressed. But after taking a break from music and overcoming thoughts of suicide, Beethoven pulled himself together and he sat down at a piano for the very first time in a long time, he began composing again. And he reached deep into his mind and his heart. And from memory and from brilliance and from sheer unadulterated creativity, he made a new composition and then another and then another. And what transpired next is nothing short of sensational. The compositions that Beethoven composed while he was able to hear, they were good. But the compositions that came from him while he was deaf changed the way people view music forever. They reverberated around the world. They are not only his most famous compositions. They are the most famous compositions of music ever written. They are played in every corner of the globe. They are the standard music taught in music schools. They are the songs played at the most important events. They make up the most successful pieces of music to have ever been played. What happened? What transpired? How could a man who is deaf compose such beautiful music? The answer is that when Beethoven went entirely deaf, he no longer composed music with his ears. He composed music with his soul. He no longer had ears contaminating his music with the music of others, with the white noise of the street. He blocked all the mediocre sounds of the world out and let the music he felt in his soul gush forth. He was deaf to the way other people did things. He was deaf to the status quo. He was deaf to what other people considered nice. He was deaf to what the peanut gallery was up to. And because he was deaf, he was free to live in a world where he got to set the rules. And from those rules came the greatest music to have ever graced the earth. The Jewish people are the single greatest composers of spiritual music on earth. We sang 3,000 years ago. We sang a thousand years ago. We sang last year. We sang today. We'll sing tomorrow. We sing in history's highest moments. And we sing at history's darkest moments. We sang walking into the B mikdash. And we sang Walking into Gas Chambers. We sang when the world was good. We sang when the world was bad. The Jewish people are the single most successful composers of spiritual music in history. And you want to know why? Because we're deaf. Because we know how to close the door to our homes. And we're deaf to what goes on outside of it. We are deaf to the noise of the street. We're deaf to the peanut gallery. We're deaf to modernity. We're deaf to the billboards and the media and the people endlessly chasing the latest fad. The Jewish people make up 1% of the world and yet make up 100% of the world's sweetest, holiest children. The Jewish people make up 1% of the world and yet make up 100% of the most loving, caring, nourishing mothers on earth. The Jewish people make up 1% of the world and yet make up 100% of the world's holiest, purest, light-filled homes on earth. And you want to know why? Because we're deaf. Because we don't want to close the door to our homes and look into the Tyra that we got from our grandparents and use it as to generate our own happiness. Our passion and purpose in this world is not determined by someone writing for the Wall Street Journal or a YouTube influencer or business executives. Our passion and purpose in this world is determined by the Tyra and the brave Yidden who heroically defended it throughout history. Our job isn't to take the Tyra and fit it into the world. Our job is to take the world and fit it into the Tyra. Our job is to close our doors a little more tightly and tap into the spiritual music inside our homes. The greatest form of music on earth. [Music]