KLM Easy Mitzvot Series 6: Love, Learn and Listen with Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit

[Music] okay our goal tonight at klm welcome back to klm and our goal tonight is to take something that's called the greatest rule in the entire torah and live it okay what's the greatest role right loving your neighbor like yourself after it says this is the greatest rule in the torah but before we get there i want to take you on a little journey okay and this journey will be very i think very helpful okay so corona was a rough year uh very much financially for a lot of uh you know economies took huge hit right now i have some friends who are entrepreneurs and what entrepreneurs do is when they see the economy plummet and things are changing they're looking for opportunities right they're they're saying well this creates a new world and new opportunities and of course if they can pull off that they can do something that makes billions they're thrilled and if they you know if it doesn't take a lot of investment amazing right i i asked this one entrepreneur friend of mine what are some of the businesses that actually took off in corona so everyone knows zoom right zoom took over the entire world here's one that was interesting cosmetic surgery exactly everyone's puzzled yeah i was too why because uh people were appearing on camera so much that they wanted to look really good so they would the cosmetic surgeons made a fortune so bitcoins there's different things okay so now i have something that if you will spiritually is just like this okay we can if excuse me for speaking in crass money terms but billions okay because it's an unnoticed opportunity all right and i'm gonna open it up to you okay so what is it listening okay listening is something we do a great deal okay but we do not do it as a mitzvah okay consciously and that's what i want that when you when you switch it over it's unbelievable okay so now first of all uh i want to point out why do we listen usually the simplest thing is it's rude not to right we don't want to be rude um we do want to restore respect right you know it's but it's like automatic behavior if someone's speaking to you're going to listen right now so that's what we normally do now i want to say let's listen to do mitzvahs okay now i have to point out some let's say we're going to talk about listening is an act of loving your neighbor like yourself okay here's a different mitzvah listening can be a kindness all right and listening also uh develops your character so those are three misfits okay now it's funny when it comes to misses with people sometimes people resist having kavanaugh for the misa you know like one person said he says you know um i don't want you know to treat people like a lulav i shake you know longer through the mitzvah of x you know they feel they're worried that you won't be as authentic if you're doing it because it's a mitzvah okay so as i was saying we tend to listen we tend to listen for other reasons we don't want to be rude we don't want to be nice you know we even try listen but what about listening as a mitzvah and as i said we're going to discuss that this doesn't make uh take away from the sincerity it makes it another thing completely okay so now let's go over again what the mixes are and i want to show you what's the difference of listening as a mitzvah and or just listening as they say here stum this listening stump okay so i came up with a little mnemonic for this okay by the way you normally i provide posters um anyone interest put in a poster please email me at the site below uh my wife made some great posters for this but we're gonna go talking head today so here's the thing right that in hebrew means for you right listening is for you look him loving your neighbor like yourself acid listening is a hesed and and finally met m midos this thing is an act of character okay look him it's for you loving yourself like loving your neighbor like yourself and midos topos having good character all right now let's take let's compare the let's say right now see this doesn't count by the way for all those watching in here right now we're doing the ultimate mitzvah of listening which is listening to tara and since klm's all about having kavana have in mind right now you're doing the mitzvah of listening to tara okay that's phenomenal but i'm talking about regular old listening right your husband says this your friend says this your boss says this etc they're starting to talk to you right so if you do it's tom that's one thing what if you do it again if you do it as after record so this is so unbelievable i wish it was parshas balak okay take note of this for partial spallac um here's the thing when we do mitzvos especially when we do activities that are mundane just listening to someone speak right in a regular so and then you say you let's say you have a mind in the midst you don't have any idea what just took place okay now in a certain sense we'll only fully know the world to come but you know what see the here's the thing if if if you realized what inserting a little intention into your activities does for sure you would just be doing it all the time the yatahara will be on the mat he would be out right so his job is to make it feel like it's not a big deal you didn't do much you won't feel like listen there's somebody who knows so much better than we do what happens when you do miss this who is it he's not jewish billam billam of russia okay you're not going to believe this okay it says in um okay billam is looking at the jewish people and what does he say he says now the word hain is like the word hine okay now if you ask people this is one of my favorite things from robbie green ask people to translate the word hine how do you translate it behold right like shakespeare behold hork behold so here's how my rebbe translates it hey that's what he may really is that's the translation of hime okay so listen what billy bill um says boom says oh these people are like a lioness and a lion is getting up and a lion jumping forward that's what dylan said okay he's looking then he's seen that now according to roshi what does he see ready he sees them wearing titsus saying krishma giving their neshama to hashem and they go to sleep it's right in rashi that's what he's saying they're like allah and by the way let's just talk about lions lionesses and lions okay i've i i was in south africa and thank god i came a week later than this event it's very heavy okay you know there's a lion park there right so uh they say very carefully don't roll down your window right so this journalist rolled down their window and in one second took their head off okay here the line just like that and we say i'm sorry we say that's the power and speed and might of a lion getting up it's very heavy now we say be a gibber khari right get up like but if you looked at them i told you a heavy case right but when you look at lions they look like the laziest things in the world they're like they're falling asleep you know nodding off in class right but so why would why would our rabbis it's in a mishna navas say get up like a lion right because when they get up it is like lightning and is with such force and power okay so you're ready for this it's just unbelievable bilum had nevula right meaning that he see when he calls us like a lion getting up and it that's we think of it as a metaphor it is not a metaphor it is an accurate description of the reality there's no better way to describe it than the force of lions but we don't see this right the gates are hard doesn't want us to see what happens when we do a mitzvah and listen with the this is the gor aria explaining it he says um this people is power okay he says like this he says when it's talking about this power it's talking about the mitzvahs why mitzvahs are gevorah he says mitzvahs are incredible might shu why why isn't mitzvah might it doesn't necessarily seem like that shiosei mitsub because when you do a mitzvah you have activated a wondrous divine act you hear it's a divine act it's it and he says as a result the jews are not doing lowly little minor actions they're doing he says no rainbow gold awesome and great and mighty acts that's what myths was hard that's what billum had to explain to us okay so now let's go back i ask you when someone says you know hi how are you doing today and you say fine and then they start speaking to you so what are you going to do what i suggest is you listen le shane mitzvah okay so now let's just go through the three mitzvahs right we said lehem i'm going to keep repeating until we have the posters right so what the l the llama the l is loving your neighbor like yourself so let's let's discuss how to do that okay i have an invention that i don't know if i'll be able to uh release this but i think it would be very good it's called the uh haftareka komojo mirror so love your neighbor like yourself mirror right why because what is the instruction just like you would like to be treated right right if you see how you would like to be do that for them so matt so imagine you're speaking right and you see yourself in the mirror right so how do you what this is the mirror how do you want to be related to when you're speaking right number one i i guess you could say you would want that the person's focused on what you're saying their eyes are there they're not on their phone etc they're okay they're focused they seem to care they they nod their head in understanding showing they're really listening right all of that is if you looked in the mirror that's how you would like to be spoken to right so that's the first thing to to listen is you know even maybe everybody just take a minute right now okay and you know right up but just think for a second what you would like to see when someone's listening to you or what would you like to experience okay so just take a second to think a few a couple seconds to think about this okay i am too okay okay cause somebody tell me what you would like to experience just get some ideas it's transforming you know when you realize that you could be that person talking to yourself so nice thing that that could be the way you should talk to that other person exactly you want to be talked to nicely and you want to be you want to feel that you can speak and they're really engaged etc right so right okay now i'm speaking right now and even though you're listening to me everybody listening to me is are also doing the mitzvah of learning tara which you should have in mind but right now okay just have in mind that think of how you'd like to be listened to and listen to me like that okay but most importantly have it in mind don't you want to be like like this awesome lion you know don't we we want it to be a divine and awesome act so when you have the kavanaugh for the mitzvah it's divine and it's awesome okay so that's number one okay so that's l love your neighbor like yourself hesed okay now why should we why do we do hessed why should we do hesset so that the simple answer is as my wife said god said so and she's right right that's why we do hesit but you know why we do hesed that with the torah commandment that is the root for hesit is not a rachel according to the time it's halach of the drach of walking in god's ways just like god is kind we are kind just like god is compassionate we are com we should be it's we're walking god's ways we're emulating hashem so the real reason we should be kind is because just like he's kind i should be kind but i ask you something this really blew me away on chavez is it really comparable so i i was thinking about this just like god's kind i'm kind so i was it was shabbos afternoon i had a nice rest right sitting on my couch very pleasant kids are asleep very pleasant so anyway i'm sitting there and i was thinking about god doing kindness right so i'm thinking i have a house i'm sitting in a couch i rent but still i have i can i have shelter right i i i'm uh i can see i can think i can smile i see you know the sun is shining the hashem is like like drowning me and kindness right so now i'm going to do a kind just like he does kindness on the kind so i realized in my humble opinion this was what i think avraham havino understood he says look at how much kindness he's doing me like he thought of his eyes and his toes and he could walk and he can speak and on and on and on he's like he is doing so much so of course even though he's riding in pain he's going to go out out of the tent and look for kindness opportunities right right like ibanez doing godzara et cetera if you realize if you just calculate in any second how much kindness he's doing we should maybe do kindness right so we would we should look for opportunities to listen as an act of kindness right you know when it when sometimes just merely showing you care you know i i've had times where a person just looks a certain way or groans and i felt so understood you know that's a kindness right so you hear so just like god does kindness we'll do kindness okay we should be sprinting after kindness opportunities when we think about how much kindness he does for us okay last one okay i think you'll get a kick of this um there's another aspect of walking in god's ways besides emulating his wonderful uh care and concern and kindness it's also fixing your character traits removing your deficiencies why because hashem is perfect and hashem exudes perfect character right and when we if our our character is intentionally imperfect with problems to give us this mitzvah to walk down his path right and remove the deficiencies right so here is a big bad ugly character trait impatience i think you agree with me being impatient right so right the thing is this when you're listening what a way to break the bad trait of impatience and cultivate patients right first you have not interrupting that's number one then you have not formulating uh what you're saying what you're going to say to them while they're speaking right you have uh you know showing interest even when you're tired [Music] is