The Secret of Jewish Survival - Rabbi Hillel Eisenberg

A Torah Anytime original series. Ever wonder why the Tyra was given in a desert? Why did Hashem choose to give it there of all places? Why not wait a few more days, walk us calmly into Arantisel and give us the Tyra on Haram Maria, a mountain already drenched in holiness instead of some random obscure barren hareni in the middle of nowhere. I think the answer hit me one night while I was rocking my baby to sleep. If you ever held a newborn at 2 in the morning, you know the drill. You rock, you sway, up and down, side to side, back and forth, and somehow it works. The baby settles, the crying fades, and he falls back asleep. Now, imagine trying that with a 40-year-old man who just he woke up in the middle of the night and he couldn't fall back asleep. And you pick him up and you start rocking him. He wouldn't drift off. He'd probably slap you across the place. So why does it calm a baby? The answer is because for 9 months that baby lived inside of motion. The mother's womb wasn't quiet. It wasn't still. It was constantly moving. It was rhythmic up and down. It was alive. The rocking doesn't disturb the baby. It reminds the baby of home. And that's the key. The Jewish [music] people were born in a desert. There was no natural food. There was no natural water. There was scorching heat. There was enemies on every side. Nothing stable, nothing predictable, no safety net, no comfort, no cal. That's exactly where we received the Tyra. Not in peace, not in comfort, not in quiet, not when everything was finally set up. Hashem didn't want us to wait until we get into the land and we set up our bagel stores and our coffee shops. No, he wanted us to get the Tyra in the desert. to make something abundantly clear for all generations. We were born into difficulty and Tyra [music] became our oxygen inside of it. That's why we survive. We survive things no [music] other nation survives. That's why no condition ever stopped us. We learned Tyra in places where it was illegal. We learned in basements and cellers and caves and forests and atticss under the threat of prison under the threat of death with guards outside with enemies watching with nothing but a flickering candle and a safer. Empires tried to crush us and Tyra kept breathing. Regimes outlawed us and Tyra kept growing. Poverty, exile, persecution, none of it became an excuse. None of it became a reason to stop. No desert was hot enough to stop us. You want to know why? Because we were born in one. We didn't wait for ideal circumstances to learn. We don't need silence or safety or comfort. We learned Tyra when the world was shaking because that's the world we were born into. You want to know why we can learn anywhere? Why Tyra [music] survives every exile? Why no amount of pressure ever breaks it? Because we were born in a desert. And deserts don't produce comfort. They produce people who don't need it. We were born in a desert. And therefore we don't wait for conditions to be right. We make them right.