What's Your Name? | Rabbi Fischel Schachter

So I'm in Switzerland for a speech. And I want to tell you, I am so tired. It was after a full Shabbos of speeches in Florida. I flew straight to Zurich and I ran to daven in the Shul, and people were so nice and I'm trying to stay up. I asked someone to pour water down my back, but he didn’t want to, I'm not sure why. And then they're selling the Aliyos. So you know, a lot of times they sell the Aliyos, especially like in a more Chasidishe Shul, it's like, I'm used to it, you know, $5 the Mitzvos. You sell all the Mitzvos during the week. $6 the Mitzvos. And here the man is saying, 10 francs the Mitzvos, 15 francs the Mitzvos. And I'm like, Sell the Aliyos for franks? Someone said to me: That's the currency here. Oh. I realized that when later on, I went into a store to buy a bottle of water, and I had a whole wad of $100 bills, not too many. They say: We don't take American dollars. You don't take American dollars? Yeah. Oh. So fortunately, I had a credit card. You know when we get up there to Shomayim, all of my riches, everything I have is useless. It's not the currency. It doesn't work. But I have so... You had so much. So what is the currency here? A Vayimaen moment. The moment you close your eyes. That's currency. That's diamonds. That's off the charts. But I tried. You tried? That's a credit card. It'll get you someplace. But if you didn't try and you didn't close your eyes, wads and wads of $100 bills are not going to help you. So they introduce me by the dinner. They're speaking Schweizerdeutsch. I don't understand a word they're saying. I only knew my queue to get up when I heard my name, so I got up there and I said, I didn't understand what the MC was saying. For all I know, he said: Listen, we got stuck with this Meshugana over here. He is such a pain in the neck. Let him speak so we can get rid of him, and so here he is, Fischel Schachter. I don't know, I don't know what he said. But I heard my name. Now, my name, once I heard my name, that was my name. He insisted that's not exactly what he said. Not exactly what he said? We get up there to Shomayim after 120. They’re going to ask us our name. My name? Everything else is meaningless. Your name. What's my name? So I once took a cab from the Kosel to Chevron with my wife. It was the first time we went. After my wedding, I wanted to show off I know my way around. It was an Arab taxi driver, and we’re going to the מערת המכפלה. He drove us into Chevron, we ran into a roadblock, and they took out guns and pointed at our head. And my wife said: There's a gun. I said: I noticed it. I don't notice everything. That I noticed. And I was like, there was this strange sense of calmness that took me over, Ribbono shel Olam. They came over to me and they said: Passport. I give them my passport. They said: Get out of the car. I said: No, I want to speak to your supervisor. My wife said: You think you're in the Motor Vehicle Bureau? This person showed up, you know, with a turtleneck shirt and a gun. He spoke a smooth English. He said: What's your name? I said: You have my passport. What's your name? I wanted to say: You don't know my name? You never listened to my tapes? I'll give you a two patch. No, I didn't. Now, what happened at the end? At the end, I don't know, I told them something, I have an uncle on the Foreign Relations Committee. My wife was going: Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't know if they bought it or they were just going to let us go anyway, or because it was an Arab driver, they wanted to protect him. That's what the Israeli soldier said at the next checkpoint. But people said to me: You didn't just faint? I said: No. When you're in a crisis, Hashem gives you a certain Ko’ach. You saw the gun? -No, I just kept hearing the question, What's my name? Who am I? Really, do I know my name? You know what our name is? The next time you have a Nisayon and you close your eyes, then you know what your name is.