The Stolen Envelope - R. Eliyahu Maksumov - TorahAnytime.com

there was a 26 year old guy living in tel aviv post military college graduate and his father was a very wealthy man he was a successful contractor the jewish family just not religious on one day this guy 26 year old he has his whole life ahead of him he gets on his motorcycle and he's driving down the streets of tel aviv and as he's driving he sees a store and he figures he'll quickly run into the store and buy himself a drink as he's walking towards the store a religious man approaches him and he gives him a flyer he looks at the flyer and it says on the flyer the purpose of life and he realizes it's a lecture that's being given by a rabbi in the community and he says you know maybe i should go to the lecture my mother always taught me that the purpose of life is to respect her and to treat her well my father always told me the purpose of life is to make money my friends told me the purpose of life is to have a good time let's hear what the rabbi has to say why not so he goes to the lecture and he listens to the rabbi and he was so enamored by everything that rabbi was saying he was mesmerized spellbound he came up to the rabbi with so many questions afterwards and the rabbi answered all his questions and slowly but surely started to come to more lectures and asked more questions the rabbi eventually welcomed him to come to his house for shabbat and this boy started to become more and more religious he started wearing yama katie and one day he comes home and the father sees he's wearing a yamaka and he teaches what happened to you don't tell me you're becoming religious don't become fanatic the primitive we you know we're successful we don't need this he says dad you don't understand i'm happy religion is good and he starts telling him no and every time the boy tries to go to school to davin he says what are you doing you're ruining your life and every time he wants to go to another lecture the father again is against it so the boy finally feels a need to speak up for himself and he tells dad you always taught us that the greatest gift that we have is free will and as long as we don't hurt anybody and i'm doing what i have to do so then there's nothing wrong with that which my heart desires so this is what my heart desires i want to be religious i want to come close to hashem in any way it's making me a better person it's going to help me become a better father a better husband a better son i'm going to treat you but i'm going to respect you more so the father said okay fine i'll leave you alone you could go to shul and finally the boy went to surely continue to learn with the rabbi one day he's coming to the synagogue and he's about to open the door he's going to go to another lecture and the girl approaches him a little bit younger than him and she says excuse me but i heard there's a lecture here says yes you'll love it i started coming here not too long ago myself and he starts talking to her about the rabbi and they come to the lecture and she was as well very impressed with the rabbi and after the lecture they started to discuss what the rabbi was talking about and one thing led to another and before they knew they started to date and they both are about shiva now and they go on a few dates and finally the boy decides he wants to propose but before he makes his final decision and he will propose to this girl he wants to get his father's blessing so he goes to the father and he says baba i want to marry this girl he's a very good girl very good family but i just want to get your permission i want to get your blessing the father asks first you have to tell me what does her father do what is his occupation he says i'd rather not answer that question he says no i'm not going to give you my blessing and so you don't tell me what does her father do well her father is unemployed he doesn't have a job no so who supports him he says well lately his daughter has been supporting him and i have been supporting him with your money and he says you've been supporting my money what's going on over here so he says no but you don't understand she's a good girl such a good family and he keeps nudging his father and eventually his father finally gives in and he says okay fine i'm willing to meet her father and he comes sits down with the father and he says look i'll be very straight up with you and he says i don't want you and i don't want your daughter but my son really likes your daughter and we're going to do as he wishes we're going to have a wedding but i don't want to feel like i was taking advantage of the wedding i have to impress my friends i have to impress my relatives it's going to be a very expensive wedding so i'm going to pay most of it but you just pay 10 percent he says what does 10 percent mean it says 10 000 this guy hasn't seen 10 000 for the past two years so he says okay as a good father i'm going to commit myself to raise the ten thousand dollars and he goes around to all his friends taking loans borrowing money raising ten thousand dollars and finally right before the wedding comes along he has all the money ready and he comes to the wedding and is so excited he's now able to marry off his daughter and the katana is happy the kalai is happy and they go down to hupa and everyone's so excited for him and the music starts going and everyone's dancing in the circle and as the father of the girl is dancing he starts getting very hot and in his pocket was a ten thousand dollar envelope and he you know he takes off his jacket and he puts it on the chair and he goes back to dancing and finally by the final dance he finally goes back to his seat he puts on his jacket puts his hand back into his pocket and the money is not there so he goes around excuse me but did you see the ten thousand dollars was the envelope nobody knows what he's talking about we're sorry we didn't see and then the father of the groom comes and he says where is it payday time to pay up where's the money he says i you don't understand i raised money ten thousand dollars i just finally got it together i put it in my pocket i put it down i came back it's not there anymore maybe somewhere we have to find out we have to ask us no what are you telling me those baloney stories you and your stories i don't believe you i knew i shouldn't trust you you lied to me what kind of family is this why are we marrying into you and you made a big deal and then it broke out into a big argument and of course when the husband starts to fight then the wives start to join and when the wives start to join and the kids start to join when the kids join them the friends start to join it becomes one big fight the rich against the poor and they don't know what to do one big macho not baseless hatred all the way finally everyone goes home the newlywed is broken this is the day they've been waiting for and the end it didn't work out the way they expected and for a whole year both sides of the family did not talk to each other a whole year later the wife turns to her husband says this is crazy enough is enough we have to somehow figure out a way maybe maybe a rabbi could speak to your father and convince him convince him to make peace he says no my father doesn't like he doesn't listen to any rabbis maybe we could get him a friend somebody could respect says no he's not he doesn't respect anyone but himself he says well what should we do and she comes up with an idea we should invite both sides of the family to our house the same day and we're going to play for them the video of the wedding we never even once watched the video we never bothered because we were so broken after the wedding maybe together now for the first time we could all watch the videos together and she of course invites her side he invites his side they come like hey what's going on why are they here why are they here why is the other side here and he says don't worry come sit down and they played the video they were hoping that they're going to watch the video they're going to see how they were dancing together and they were so happy in the video together and hopefully that's going to bring back good feelings good vibes and as they're watching the video the father of the the groom of the husband is watching and he says look what a beautiful kupa i paid for that and look at the wedding hall look at the chandeliers i paid for the food i paid for everything and suddenly they seen the video how the uh the the wife's father takes off his jacket and he places his jacket onto the chair and they said um let's see if he's saying the truth let's see if the money is really in there and everyone's watching the jacket everyone wants to see what happened to that money is ten thousand dollars and as they're watching and they see by the third dance already the father of the of the of the husband now was dancing inside the video and he's dancing he's dancing in circles with his friends and then he breaks out of the circle he comes up to the jacket slips his hand into the pocket of the jacket that belongs to the father of the of the girl and he takes out the money puts into the jacket and walks away can you imagine how ashamed how embarrassed he was in front of everybody that night and everybody was there and everybody witnessed how he stole all the money how embarrassing what a busha the story is really about all of us says this world is like a wedding hall and one day we're going to come to shaman hashem is going to invite his side of the family the malachim he's going to invite our side of the family the he's going to invite our ancestors and they're all going to watch the video of our life and hashem is going to say look i gave you so much time in this world what did you do with your time what did you accomplish and they're going to watch the video of your life you're going to say look he stole some time over here he sold another envelope the envelope in the story is the time that hashem gives us he steals another and another of it on more time and more time hashems i'm giving so much time what are you doing with your time you're wasting it what hashem says if you do to shiva if you repent for all that waste of time for all the things that you did that you were not supposed to be doing i will forgive you and we're going to cut out those moments within the video and you don't have to face the embarrassment in the next world but this doesn't just happen in the end of our lives this happens every single year on rosh hashanah they play a video of everything that we have done throughout the entire year and hashem is coming to elul and he's saying this is it this is your opportunity in elul to do to shiva so when it comes to rosh hashanah yom kippur and we're going to watch your video and we're going to see all that transpired throughout the year all of your behavior all the time that you're utilizing you didn't utilize all the things that you should have done you did and you we're going to see we're going to see what you accomplished and what you didn't accomplish in bazar hashem if you do to shiva and this is your opportunity to do the shiva we're going to cut out all those moments within your year they that were bad and if you do it would love they're going to replace it with mitzvoth hashem we're going to use up this time of this year as we're approaching this great and awesome days and we're going to show hashem how committed we are to him how sincere we are there are preparedness that we're willing to return to him even though it might be difficult you