The Rabbi and the Muslim | Rabbi Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin

My challenge in life, I was put in the prison with a sentence of 27 years, a terrible גזירה, and I took it with Emunah in Hashem. Hashem is with me. I'm not alone. With Bitachon Hashem will help me. My job was to stay connected to Hashem through Torah and Mitzvos, even in such a place. One of the favorite pastimes over there, because everybody there is sitting for a long time, they were watching all these screens, all the shows, the sports, whatever they were watching. Right in the beginning, Hashem helped me make the right decision, I'm not watching any of these things. I'm going to use my time with my Neshama. I'm going to let my Neshama connect with HaKadosh Baruch Hu and there I'm going to find the Menuchas HaNefesh, the peace I was looking for, the happiness I was looking for, and there, so I did it. How did they get the audio? The video was all there. The audio came through a radio, initially, and then they sold MP3 players so people can download songs onto the MP3 player. The celly that I was with knew I wasn't buying one, and in conversation, he gave it over to the leader of the Muslim group there. And the leader of the Muslim group was intrigued. How is it, a prisoner be in prison, everybody knew the sentence I had, for such a long time, and he is not buying an MP3 Player. He couldn't understand it. In front of his buddies, he came in one day and he asks me: Hey, Rabbi, I heard you're not buying an MP3 player. Is that true? He was not violent. He never told his group to be violent to me. I didn't want to offend him, so I told him: It's true. Then he asked me: Why? So I give him one line. I said: They may have my body in prison, but I'm sure not going to give them my Neshama, I'm sure not going to give them my soul. I said: You know, when you listen to these songs the words are either ideas that come from somebody, what they like, what they don't like, things that they aspire to be, what they're afraid of, what they believe in, all these different things. I don't believe like that. I have my belief. If I'm going to listen to it, I explained to him, I'm going to give them my soul. I’ll start believing like them. I want to maintain my own healthy belief in my Jewish God. He liked it. He liked it so much that he made an announcement to everybody, Okay, he's not buying one either. It seemed almost like there was a competition between the Rabbi and the leader of the Muslims. I said: Listen, I’m not telling you what to do. This is what I was afraid of. But I just... You asked me a question, so I gave you the answer. Three weeks later, I walk by and I see he does have an MP3 player in his hand and he is watching something. And I was wondering to myself, Why is it that I had the Ko’ach, that Hashem gave me the Ko’ach, to be able to maintain my separateness from all these screens and all these songs and maintain my healthy, emotional Yiddishkeit, when he couldn't, even for three weeks. He sincerely seemed to want to do it. And then it hit me, there's a very big difference. I'm a Yid and I have a Neshama. Therefore, I can derive pleasure in life from Torah. Even though there's no other pleasures there, there's no food over there, there's no clothes over there, there's no friendships over there. They have a little pleasure of watching something. Even if I deny myself, I'm not going to look, Vayimaen, I'm not going to look, I can still have pleasure in my life because I'm living the life of a Yid. I can actually enjoy learning a blat Gemara, I can enjoy saying a Kapitl Tehillim, I can enjoy learning a Mishnah, I can enjoy doing a Chesed, I'm full of life because I can live the life of my Neshama. On the other hand, someone who doesn’t have a Neshama, if he's gonna deny himself, deny, not doing this, not doing that, how is he going to replace an enjoyment in his life? So he tried with force. It didn't work for him. Remember, A Yid has a Neshama. Even when we deny ourselves, Vayimaen, we can easily replace plenty of enjoyments in life with kosher enjoyments, with kosher learning, kosher Torah, and that Nisayon actually helped me overcome many more Nisyonos.