(Way#16) MINIMIZING BUSINESS: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good afternoon everybody welcome back to another episode beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston we're doing the 48 ways to wisdom folks this is just a dynamic class today we've got part 16 and i encourage everybody go back catch each and every episode you'll see how everything grows and mounts and grows and mounts and grows and grows and it's going to keep on going we've got a long way to go uh but every class is gold so please i encourage everybody to check it all out but let's see what the rabbi's got for us today rabbi poston always a joy to be with you and i'm thankful once again you stay up so late in israel after shabbat to share the torah with the nations of the world thank you and the class is yours sir thank you very much dan i'm glad to be back i'm glad to see well i can't see anybody but i know they're there i'm glad that other people have joined and i get a lot of feedback i get a lot of emails and texts and people are enjoying it and growing and it's actually for some of some of the um watchers they claim it's even one of their best classes so uh the 48 ways to wisdom oh there's clarity in it so let's start first of all shivotov and and this is the month of the month of redemption and bizrat hashem we should see some really good news coming forth and what did i want to say i want to mention that this is class number this is not class number 16 we're dealing with the 16th way for the 40 of the 48 waves to wisdom so i forget what episode it is but it's the 16th of the waves in which one should actively pursue wisdom right so it's called minimizing business keep in mind it says minimizing it doesn't say to um negate it doesn't say to completely not be involved in business we all know how business is important in fact i'll give you a um one perkier both we're going to deal with a lot of um sources towards the end but i wanted to mention a verse and that we'll deal with to get a perspective and one of the perciavo so actually let's deal with the verse the verse i want to mention first first that's in proverbs chapter two it's really verses four and five okay so let's deal with that just to get a perspective that this is necessary we're going to do yeah well you can go ahead and read it and then i'll try to explain it four if you seek it like silver and hunt for it like treasures then you will understand the fear of the lord and you will find the knowledge of god so just to put in perspective it says minimize business not to do away with it which i'll explain shortly but ready for this to seek wisdom like it's a business so the word minimize it's like mitsum tsem to constrict to focus to hyper concentrate so we're going to talk about how you should i love i i don't like saying people should but in terms of what we're trying to learn here so one who wants to incorporate this into their life so they should look at their life like it's a business in other words there's so much wisdom in the business world and we're going to talk about the different aspects if you were a ceo or you were investing a lot of money into a business you would want to make sure these things happen well this is your life right like i don't know drum roll like like this is the the greatest show on earth right this is your life you want to be successful you want to acquire as much and i'll just use the analogy here silver money right whatever we call profits let's say in your business so now take all your business acumen and concentrate it into whatever lessons there are in terms of running a successful business use that for your life right in other words [Music] seeking real money seeking fame and glory and all kinds of material profits is not is not what life is about okay many very wealthy people have been asked you know surveys have been done and uh many unfortunately many of them are unhappy you know or they have found where the true happiness is and it's not in the glory of the money but it's in family it's meaning okay so that is what that's how we're going to start off the idea that minimizing does not mean to do without obviously we're going to see i'm going to bring this verse in right now there's no way that we should do it out and that's in perch chapter 3 mishna 17 it's just the last line of that mission and i'll just read it if there is no flower there is no torah if there is no torah there is no flower so you may ask well what is like what they there's a famous expression what came first the chicken or the egg right yep so where do you start i mean if you have no torah so you're you're not gonna have any flour if you're only flower you're not gonna have any tauros so what does it all mean so i don't want to i don't want to be all over the place because there's so much information i want to share but i will tell you there's another mission in prague that's right if you don't incorporate malacha some kind of work with your torah learning your learning is not your face not it's not really substantial so let's just discuss this one idea if there's no flower there's no tara notice it doesn't say if there is no bread there is no torah so the maraw points out i mean we all have refrigerators we have storage containers that are you know hermetically sealed and we don't really have to worry too much about bugs if they are if it was you know placed into this container without any bugs we're not so afraid but in the old days i can imagine it was very difficult so okay so what is flour flour whatever i you know i make pancakes i love pancakes so it doesn't allow flour to make a few pancakes can you imagine to say bread it means i already have to have the full um the end product to say and bread is like dough and dough is like money right it's another way of expressing actually minim a minimum amount a minimal amount of flour is all i need i don't need a lot i don't need a whole loaf of bread all i need is a little bit of flour that's minimizing right you hear you hear where i'm going with this okay so the more toe you have in a certain sense the more system from hashem and he will provide that little bit of flour right so so you don't have to have a whole loaf of bread you don't have to have so much and you know what do you have you open up your whole cabinets you have this little i don't know trying to think of some remember those old kodak containers used to put your film in that's how much flour you need you don't need a pound or a kilo you just to make a few pancakes right a little pizza bread okay so that was uh just we're like just building the foundation here number one i just want to review minimize means to focus to concentrate to take lessons and we're going to discuss them let me just give you an idea because one should think of themselves as the biggest business right was it um there was a circus the greatest i don't know circus the greatest show on earth this is you you're the greatest show on earth so if you're the biggest business i'll just list five things there of north weinberg would bring in time management it's so important we learned this in yeshiva it was so important then we'll talk about each one of these more in detail if you were running a business you would run you would want to hire efficiency experts right if you were running a great business that you wanted to succeed and not to fail you would have a certain amount of quality control and you would have a long-term plan a five-year plan maybe that maybe that's enough i mean obviously you have to have short-term plans and long-term plans but let's cut it in the middle you need at least like something like a five-year plan and of course you would have reached research and development i mean we're going to discuss all of these so think about it like you really are um a big business so number one we spoke about i think it was in proverbs right chapter 2 that seek it like silver so what's the comparison i mean that's money right that that right there is how we can begin this idea that it's really um like like a business um now one of the other ideas is that every good successful business probably has i mean i don't know about the mafia i don't know about all these like under the radar but you have to have orderly books right you have to have the books in order it's very important so these great ideas that i just expressed anybody in business would know this is um a prerequisite to to to um success so let's talk about just just in general there's a positive and a negative the positive is everyone has to do some business the negative is don't overdo it okay that's going to be one of the main themes um okay so let me tell you how the roshiva describes these ideas um unfortunately many people have been swallowed up right they get involved in a business like i went to university i went to college and went for business but it was a very specified business i was a chef's apprentice and i went to um hotel motel restaurant management that was my i don't know today if they still do like these very specific things um i had a great professor he happened to have been jewish i think i was the only jewish kid in the whole class we got along great um so he had all these great business ideas um i'm telling you i besides let's say what i learned on the streets you know i think i'm very street smart i'm not very academic although i had surprised myself somewhat um one of the ideas he brought he brought up like you're opening up a business okay you're gonna open a restaurant or a hotel or some kind of you know service and you you wow you found like a great rent great place great location but you didn't do the background check why did you go to city hall and ask the committee if they have any plans to redo that street maybe it needs um major what do you call it sewage sewage anything where they're going to rip it up and you might be out of business for six months i mean maybe somewhere within the next five years right doesn't that make sense you're about to invest so it was just like an idea that you never maybe maybe never would have thought of um so okay so the next idea he brings down a story about elijah the prophet happens to be in one of our midrashim and elijah the prophet meets up with a a um a fisherman now what does he ask him he says you know have you ever studied torah so what is the fisherman gonna say say look i don't really have much time for that but uh so he says i'm just a simple man i'm not very intelligent i can't really under understand the torah but at least god blessed me with the ability to be a successful fisherman so elijah he asked him how do you like he's gonna test him here a little bit maybe it's not right that you're not learning tara or putting enough time the question is how much time i'll just skip to one other point i know we're all over the place the rambam says that someone who's we'll call a balabaya he's not a torah scholar he's just a regular jew the rambam says he should learn nine hours a day and work three hours a day if that doesn't tell you what it means to minimize minimize business i mean come on so i was fortunate enough to be mishamesh to assist revenue weinberg's brother and [Music] yeshiva in baltimore and he gave a sheer once and i was like well mind-boggling he said that was what the rambam said back then today if only it would be that people who are not torah scholars if they work nine hours a day and put in three hours of learning hall of life only it would be unfortunately you know we get sucked up look i mean family's great we got family to deal with brooke hashem got kids to deal with got school issues you know parent teacher me there's a lot of things that grab our attention but torah study for a jew and of course we know we're talking to many non-jews here however you know fixing a time for study is an absolute necessity whether it's one hour there or five minutes a day or even five minutes a week it should be a priority so we see how far the generations have gone down but i think it's a very interesting observation from the time of the rambam until present day going back to the story of elijah the prophet so he meets this guy and he says well let me ask you a question how do you prepare your nets so he goes in such intricate detail how he reads them how he even picks the uh the type of rope right um and the the kind of patterns he uses in order to create his net and he talks about it as being a very exact science he says okay now how do you go about catching the fish so he says that's also very complex he goes into the you know the different seasons the different types of streams the different types of water currents the temperatures where they are you know as respect and in respect to the surface or lower down how far you have to put the nets down how long they should be in there it's like a whole science and he says i've studied um for many years mastering these so he says um it's very impressive so you really know your business so he says who gave you all this understanding of course he says well he was a believing jew this elijah was talking to this guy he says obviously came from hashem well he asked if it's the almighty that gave you the intelligence to fish surely he gave you enough intelligence to study his torah so i don't know what you know i know we're all simple people right guess what you you you dan many of the listeners you know you could you could you could put a little bit more time and energy um into learning don't think that it's it's beyond you right hashem will give you seattle i think i mentioned in last week's class that if you teach your grandchildren torah the statement was said it's as if you're receiving the torah from mount sinai now the question is i asked who the grandchild as if he is because you're keeping blink there's a transmission that's um complete as if he's receiving it from har sinai from the revelation itself or you the teacher i believe it's both i think the teacher for sure sure will receive an added shemaya because he's going out of his way to teach again teaching there's a prerequisite to teaching of course and that is to learn so i'll just mention what el yahu's parting words were because this um this fisherman was crying out very upset that you know elijah basically rebuked him to a great degree so elijah says my son do not be so distraught every one of us on the face of the earth has the same exact excuse but our own actions will testify against us so this is another thing in judaism as opposed to many other religions right our actions our deeds that is what we are creating and so it's totally possible even if it means sitting down with one mishna right or one jewish concept and just reading that paragraph over and over again or just king david psalms reading it over and over again until whether you're practicing your hebrew where you're you know just trying to memorize it the concepts and then going to a commentary one week every can you imagine there's only 52 weeks in a year right so you're talking about in three years you could go if you just take one chapter of psalms there's 150 that's all you know in less than a year in less than three years okay i'm not i'm not rebuking anybody i'm just reading here this is um it's a business right we want to be successful you have to make the efforts you have to make the efforts um we all if only all the almighty would have given me understanding and with all to reach my potential and become great and torah to create the best marriage possible i would do it but he didn't give me the tools so i don't need so he never gave me the tools that i need to succeed that is we're lying to ourselves if you could succeed and even like as a a cleaner right you go and clean people's homes you know which type of uh detergent what kind of sponge works well on that type of um surface um we're going to talk about time management right at some point okay it's true you might be getting paid by the hour so maybe you don't care but that's called guess what stealing um but you should try to figure out how to be efficient like if he if your boss expects you in two hours to clean the whole house can you imagine if you could do it an hour and 55 minutes right you still get the two hours you'll still get paid for two hours but think about it i mean if you are using the wrong material that's causing you to work doubly hard or extra hard or you know the wrong with the wrong cleaning uh solution balloon chain the same thing i mean he really gives an example a few different examples one of them is about just in terms of like your shoes okay every morning you wake up okay you know where your shoes are you could spend every single day five minutes looking for your shoes i mean come on all you have to do is put them in a certain place every night and they're always in the same place you don't have to spend five minutes that's five valuable minutes i mean just an as an example work work smarter not harder okay operate efficiently that's the next idea so um he uses an example about a factory worker that whatever it takes 10 steps to turn a bolt now the 10 steps could be you know where the bolts are located to where the tool to turn it is located to maybe how many steps physical steps you have to take to go here and there whatever it is but guess what what if it could be done in two so try to imagine if you have i don't know how many factory workers doing exactly the same thing times that by how many minutes or hours and then take it for a whole year you could have i don't know i'm going to throw out a number it doesn't matter 30 hours 50 hours 100 hours times however many workers there are and what a waste of money right so think about in your own life you know how we could use our time much better right with wisdom so he just mentions over here again life is big business get organized get your time under control you will you'll have less stress and you will achieve more um the next idea is just hard work so a guy goes to college and he he thinks he's going to be an engineer he applies to an engineer school and um guess what after a week he says okay where's my money i came i want to be an engineer i want to make a lot of money so this is why i'm here i came to make money the school's like what you just applied i mean you're talking about years of learning and after that you're going to apply hopefully at a job where you might make minimum wage you still have to pay back all this other money that you you know the tuition um and it's going to take you a while till you get a good name for yourself you've been able to put a plaque people come to you they heard you're you know a great engineer and they'll commission you out it doesn't work like that you don't ex what is it called instant gratification here too you know uh people invest lots of money and they know that they're not even gonna i mean i don't want to say god forbid open my mouth to the satan but people do know they are aware that it could be two years three years five years down the road before they actually start making a profit i mean this is part of opening a business you just know you can borrow money even if it's your own money right you have to count it as if it's borrowed so you can't just expect to make money immediately so acquiring wisdom requires determination discipline and patience keeping that in mind of course hard work uh strategic planning so we discuss these ideas in general now we'll talk about them um so strategic planning is an absolute must for any successful business no serious businessman just says oh let's open a factory in china especially today right so oh just send somebody go go buy a building first they have to determine their long and short term goals decide on core strategies to reach those goals spend months to uh to doing the necessary research on a wide array of crucial issues where the more where the raw materials coming from what is the labor market what are the taxes and expert costs who is the target market so effective living this is what it's all about requires effective planning because if you don't know your destination you will never get there so you have to know what are your long and short term goals okay keep it keeping an account we jewish people before they go to sleep they say the shema and we make truth be told i mean you can make it during the day you don't have to wait till the end of the day but it's a good it's a good time to for sure go over it anybody who has a store knows they have to what do you call it it's taking stock right you have to know when when what sells what's not selling so well you don't want to have empty shelves of the best selling article you don't want to be waiting for it to come in it's very disappointing customers will go somewhere else they might not come back at all it takes a so keeping accounting before you go to sleep you have to make a hedge fund but here he writes the businesses can succeed or fail because of the quality of their accounting department right it's i think you have discussed this with me too i don't want to say anything on this uh tv here on this okay so to properly measure your business it is essential to have thorough accurate and up-to-date balance sheets to understand your income and expenses and your profit and your loss so too in life we make we need to make spiritual accounting that's what the word nephesh means personal soul right you need to um every night before going to bed review your past days events to evaluate whether you profited or you lost what did you accomplish today what mistakes did you make right if you don't know what mistakes you're bound to do them over and over again the next thing i mean i'm not saying it's the next thing but for sure at some point before retiring make a plan for the next day right you just write it out you know even if it's not the exact times right even if it's not so detailed i know i have to go shopping i know i have to smell this letter i know that i have to call this person to apologize i know i have to call this person to invite them shabbos because my wife told me do this do this and i have to add all the things she she asked me because it will help me the following day even prioritize you know when i wake up and i look at it and things can change right things can change a little bit but how am i going to live an effective life unless i i make my own accounting research and development right so don't you want a better product i mean that's isn't that ultimately what research and development it could also bring the price down and make a better profit that's for sure but you want to have a a greater profit right when you you're a ceo of the company and you say you know what my my company's making enough money we don't need to we don't need a research and development department are you kidding me okay also testing the market right before you put a new product out you want to make sure that there are um that there is a consumer and that could take months of research so too before making any major life decision such as moving to a new city getting married choosing a career be sure to do a thorough analysis of the long-term feasibility and ramifications [Music] i know many people don't like this person i'm sure that you're you're you're your listeners all do but uh imagine the ceo of a company we're not gonna mention which company but he's been no he actually became president united states he let's say imagine he he heard a great idea from a janitor in his health in his hot tower on his hotel this guy supposedly right would be willing to listen to the janitor who had an idea where else you gonna get your ideas from other than the people in your business who have been working for years and uh you know we're not even talking about i'm sure this person would elevate and give the guy such a a bonus for such a if this idea could bring him many much more money but um if someone is willing to take the advice even from a janitor to make the business more profitable of course he would right the same thing is true in life why are we looking at people who we think are less than us not as smart and us are not as rich as us or not as successful as us so too they also have life experience and maybe it's worth listening to and he ends with the verse which we started with in michele that's proverbs chapter 2 verse 4 if you seek this king solomon the remember he's the wisest man who ever lived why wouldn't we listen to him if you seek wisdom as if it were silver take the acumen of business condense it down focus on it minimize it and he says we know how to be serious about pursuing money by applying the same diligence and tools to pursuing wisdom we can scale the heights of greatness yeah can i make a statement you know when i when i first did this class you know i heard the rabbi sharing it at the time um if you seek it like silver and hunt for it like treasures and he likened the different methods for discovering those elements of silver whereas silver you've got a mine you've got a dig you've got to actually pull out the raw ore to get to it whereas treasure is like a buried treasure where you actually have to do the research like you were explaining you've got to research and look for treasure in a way that it's buried somewhere and you need to find exactly where and and that there's something big here going on it's exciting yeah yeah for sure i just want to bring a few other ideas um so let's go to deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 13. deuteronomy 13 30. no the other way around chapter 30 verse 13. oh forgive me sir chapter 30. verse 13 reads nor is it beyond the sea that you should say who will cross the other side of the sea for us to fetch it for us to tell it to us so that we can fulfill it okay so obviously this verse has much deeper meaning that i'm going to say something that sounds very superficial but it's only the first few words nor is it beyond the sea so we have a gamora that tells us that um people who work like on boats and they travel a lot they're not capable or i shouldn't say capable they're not likely to become great torah scholars um let me just read words here and the reason right it's not beyond the c whatever this is because torah can can only be properly acquired with constant study and review we spoke about that last week review review to the point that the torah scholar will not leave the study hall and to go out and engage in business okay so don't think that you're gonna find it on the other side of the sea it's not there it's right here under your nose right here um so that's what the gamora expels on this verse and i was looking for this verse actually the other day rabbi thank you it's not across the sea so he goes on the tana specifically said are artana the the author of our mission right with limited business activity limited business activity limited but doesn't say without business activity we all know that we have to live because living without some form of income is impossible but minimizing it right concentrating on the most valuable thing which is um wisdom and use all of your acumen business acumen to acquire wisdom and another mission in perky i vote and i'll tell you where it is 125. where do i have it uh it's perky out of chapter two mishna two um rabban gamliel would say beautiful is the study of torah with the way of the world now in hebrew it's um indirect eretz that's what it means and but would go on it could mean derek eretz could mean um ethics it usually means work but it goes on for the toil of both of them ceases sin causes sin to be forgotten ultimately all torah study is not that is not accompanied with work is destined to cease and to cause sin so in hebrew the whole torah so you see that we cannot do without the question is how to minimize now we did discuss this in um the beginning when we when we talked about the the basic seven one of the ideas in the laws of jubilee of uh yovel brings down that all humans not just jews who dedicate their their life to torah will actually have removed from them the government and even hard work and hashem will provide they become they turn over their life to hashem and hashem is their portion and will provide king david right we talked about that then so it just reminds me of something that i i shared in my last class uh on on the parsha um the yakow i just want to share it now because i think it's just absolutely fascinating since we know there are seven general principles no height laws what is what is so significant about significant about seven so i want to share i want to share this piece we'll get back to our business at hand i just think it's so fascinating so the torah itself is our link like we're talking about that is the most important thing in the world to acquire wisdom the torah is our link to hashem is the way we can understand ourselves and the world around us it's so important you cannot live without torah or non-jew so the seven this number seven is going to be linked to everything i'm going to talk about days weeks months cycles of years and thousands of years it's all linked and the reason i connected it it was in last week's parsha because it the torah tells us right in the beginning moses got everyone together six days a week you shall work and then the seventh day it's arrest for hashem and then you have the laws of building the tabernacle and one of the principles we learn is whatever comes first is more important that comes second and therefore shabbos pushes off building the temple you have to stop doing what we call malacha what we call the 39 specific creative acts that went into building the tabernacle slash temple the dwelling place of hashem okay with that in mind so the clear car who the sure i give goes into great detail in another book it's actually called the ola safrian it's another book he wrote it doesn't matter but this is where he starts that the days of the week so the days of the week the the day the torah was given was given on shabbos we know that we left on a thursday from egypt 50 days later it was it happened to be shabbos the the day that we received the the the the torah from heaven torah on shavuot the first right that was called that was happened on shabbat so there's already a connection the idea of learning torah it's so important that you think don't think that shabbos is a day of doing nothing it says to make shabbas actually says to make shabbas make shabbos by learning torah so that's the first idea that's what you should be doing on shabbos learning as much tara as possible so number one the torah was given on chops so now days so that's days in other words first of all there's actually a medrush that says each day was paired up with another so sunday and monday were together tuesday and wednesday were together thursday and friday every day had a a partner shabbos had no partner and asked hashem where's my partner god says the jewish people are your partner you're going to be unified with the jewish people so that's why the torah and shabbos go so well together that the jewish people should be learning torah on shabbos okay the torah was given on chalice the next idea weeks so the torah itself was given on chevous which means after seven weeks seven times seven seven days seven weeks is the tour was given on chavos okay the next idea is months i know this is a controversial idea for those who have no clue about the oral tour itself but uh we know that does say count from nissan right that's the first month which today is rosh chodesh nissan very nice what's the seventh month the seventh month is the month the term was actually received what do i mean just real simple we left in nissan 50 days later we're at mount sinai okay at mount sinai we said nasa venismo we will accept right we'll not say we will do an ishmael we will understand it we took a commitment we entered the covenant 40 days later moses comes down supposedly allegedly with the first set of tablets but unfortunately allegedly no i'm kidding i don't mean it's not a syrian it's not a joking matter but unfortunately we collectively were involved in the sin of the clone calf and moses broke those tablets we never received the actual tablets so the next 40 days he's praying for our forgiveness he's very busy and i said i forgive you on the first of what day a month the first of ello i forgive you come up and you will receive the second set of tablets so 40 days later is the tenth of tishrei the seventh month this raised the seventh month that's when we received the torah i.e the ten commandments uh so you see this number seven in terms of months the seventh month we received the torah next okay then we had years so there's a shmita cycle everyone's aware of that already right the seventh year what happens on shemitah the farmers they all sit and learn torah that's what they do they don't work the land they don't harvest that's what they're doing that's what they're supposed to be doing and that's by the way this idea of the non-jews sitting and learning and dedicating themselves also applies that's what the rambam brought down in the laws of shemitah jubilee that anybody doesn't matter if you're born a jew or not you have every right to dedicate yourself fully not everyone chooses that but if you do choose there's a a promise you'll be taken care of hashem is your portion and he will take care of you okay so now we have years now there's cycles of years because the cycle of the shemitah the seven seven i'm using that number again seven schmidt is jubilee right you have seven times seven the 50th year is the jubilee year okay so you have what happens in the jubilee year so each jew goes back to his portion goes right literally if he sold his land it's not sold in forever it sold only like a lease up until 50 years meeting up until the jubilee and he goes back this is the words of the torah goes back to his portion his portion is the torah and therefore again you sit down it's like two straight years of shemitah right the 49th years of the year and the 50th year is a it's a jubilee but you're also not allowed to work the land two full years of sitting and learning torah okay now there's another concept called the thousands of years so the world just like it was created i'm gonna use the word created in seven days it was created in six days and the seventh day god rested we know it's a seven day cycle so too there's thousands years of year cycles so the first two thousand years like we started the medrash that every day had a partner so the first two thousand years was called chaos touhou vivo that was before abraham you know entered the covenant so around the year 2000 i'm talking about jewish time that's when avraham was born in 1948 so he was 52 years old he made a covenant with hashem around that time and that's when the next two thousand years begins called the two thousand years of torah and then somewhere around eighteen nineteen hundred years ago we had what we call the beginning of the time of meshiach so the last two thousand years are called the times of meshiach and uh the last thousand years had no partner of course as a partner just like the first seven days of creation this is where there will be no work it's going to be shabbos a thousand years um all that will be pursued is the wisdom of hashem right and this is for jews and non-jews alike non-jews alike right we're talking about the resurrection of the dead there won't be any hunger there won't be any poverty right all that will be done is the um the mind the the spiritual pursuit right no more searching for bread or making bread there won't be any work and just like shabbos it's all done anyways i wanted to just introduce that idea very beautiful um okay now in perki chapter 1 verse 15 sham i would say make your torah study a permanent fixture in your life say little do much and receive every man with a pleasant countenance it's really the first part right the idea of um make your torah learning fixed very important like i said if it's five minutes a week doesn't matter that's it turn off your phone no you don't exist to the outside world this is you know all the work whatever it is you've worked a 35 hour a 45 hour 40 hour a week when you get to that five minutes of bliss of just learning torah you're dead to the world another idea brought down in perkiavo chapter 4 verse 10 uh mishnah 10. it actually says rebbe mayer would say engage middle minimumly in business minimally in business and occupy yourself with torah okay i don't want to read the wrestling it's all it's all good it's very interesting but that was the main point over there um here is the rambam he brings down ideally uh the ideal schedule of a working person working three hours a day to support himself learning torah for nine hours a day i already mentioned earlier on roviakov weinberg zaczal said how leviath only today that people who do work nine hours should put in say a minimum of three hours right halloween um it does say in good marketing 82a that a person should teach his son a clean and easy trade so maybe this is a jewish thing but i come on i mean what's the purpose so that the person can still have time to dedicate uh part of his his day to torah study um there's another gamora in brock lesnar's 35b and it's a it's a great question like in other words ruby shimon bar yochai everyone heard of the rashby right so he he was a little bit of a he sounded like he sounded like an extremist right he was into 13 spent 13 years at 12 years in the cave when he came out he was still hot and on fire and he had to go back he went back for another 12 months altogether 13 years in the cave so but he really felt that people should not be working they should only be learning torah that's what he felt believed he lived it so there's the mission over there says the the gomorrah says many did like ruby ishmael what did ruby ishmael do yeah you plow at the time you're supposed to plow you plant at the time you're supposed to plant your harvest at the time and many people were successful in their torah in other words they had a job and let's just say they had normal lives and they were successful in both areas both let's say financially in the world and with torah as well the the the gomorrah also says you know many people tried like shimon rashby but they didn't succeed and to constantly engage in torah study putting the burden of earning a living onto hashem's shoulder so to speak and they were not successful so what do you think it's trying to teach us don't even try no i don't think so i think it means that if you don't succeed it's not the end of the world if you feel this is your calling there's no reason not to try know that the the numbers are going to be against you meaning that the possibility is going to be against you that's why i encourage many of my students who have converted how levi would great if you're you're young enough and you're able to go to yeshiva just for one year just try it one year right and and my other students who are younger right before you get married right before you go off to college or before you do anything in your life try to make it possible to spend one year maybe two how you're not going to get that opportunity again you know once you get married you're going to end up working and who knows what's going to happen you have kids not not that's a bad thing all those things are good but they're very time consuming and if you could try at least temporarily you know especially when you're young but you know what many people who in their in in as pensioners after they retire do do they do this and i tell you they do have great regrets they didn't do it earlier but that's that's the way of life what can you do life gets away on us if we don't if we don't manage it very important the rom bomb brings down these ideas we we mentioned the beginning to minimize business means to hyper focus on learning all the lessons you could have learned that applying them to your life so in in the talmud torah in his torah chapter 3 6-9 i'll read through them very briefly just get an idea uh he mentions a person's whose heart inspires him to fulfill this mitzvah properly and become crowned with the crown of torah that's called cater torah by the way ketter 620 that's the full 613 plus seven that means this is applicable to jew and nanju alike should not divert his sorry should not divert his attention to other matters and he should not set his heart on acquiring torah with wealth and honor simultaneously in other words it's not it i'm not saying it's all or nothing but in a certain sense you have to be willing to give up doesn't mean you can't have it you may have old money you may have a very wealthy spouse you may have a wealthy father-in-law then you may win the lottery there may be certain things you talented you could still do two or three hours a day to make a lot of money but where is your attention right where is your focus so don't divert your attention to other matters right don't set your heart on acquiring both torah and wealth it may come but rather such is the way of torah bread with salt you shall eat water and small measure you shall drink and on the ground you shall sleep and a life of discomfort you shall live but in torah you will toil the ten now this is another it's very important parque perhaps as well the task is not incumbent upon you to complete right there's a lot of work you don't you just have to start you just have to do your bit a bit me small amount um just know you're not free to desist from it right you're never free if you've acquired much torah you've acquired much reward and the reward is in accordance with the difficulty in other words the fund sarah agra according to the effort is the reward so someone who makes a great effort their reward will even be greater the next halacha says perhaps you're going to say i'll wait until after i am asked a certain amount of money and then i'll return and study right how many people have said that i'll wait until after i acquire what i need and i'm free from my business and then i'll return and study if you allow such thoughts to enter your heart you will never merit the crown of torah it doesn't mean you won't be a good law-abiding you know jew or non-jew but it's not going to get you the crown of torah rather make your torah study primary and your work secondary do not say when i have free time i will study why because it may never come right okay it's written in the torah it is not in the heavens it is not across the sea so this statement it's not in the heavens hence the torah is not found in proud spirited or arrogant people nor is it found among those who travel across the seas therefore the sages said not everyone i hope in the right not everyone who is involved excessively in business will become wise right and our sages also commanded here it is minimize your business activities and occupy yourself the torah and the last of the rambam brings down the words of torah are not found in the proud spirited or in the hearts of any of the high-hearted but rather in a person who is subdued and lowly of spirit who wallows in the dust at the feet of the sages and removes temporal desires and pleasures from his heart he works a small amount each day just enough to sustain himself when he doesn't have enough to eat when he doesn't when he does not have enough to eat and the rest of his day and night he engages in torah study um just there's two more points i think i wanted to bring and that is um he mentions the submission we already spoke about in chapter three seventeen of percyavote if there is no flower there is no torah we know that you know what a father has to teach him his son a trade so the type he should train him in is um like we said it should be light it shouldn't be hard but uh if you don't do this you're putting your son in danger god forbid of becoming a robber right and like to earn a dishonest living right if you don't teach him a trade what's he gonna he's gonna start i don't know forging checks i don't know whatever i can't imagine right if you don't know what to do you're gonna start stealing candy bars and bread from the stores out of desperation of futile i already mentioned about the maharao said it says flower right a flower is like just a little bit so what do you add you can add all kinds of stuff you can add some water some yeast maybe an egg you know and you're set it's a good breakfast um okay and there's yeah i think i think i covered everything beautiful real peaceful class tonight rabbi real peaceful i mean there's so much there that is practical uh but in the end i love how you brought out how the person achieves the crown of torah uh explicitly but how that's contrary to um the the more driven world that we have here in the west i mean here in the west you have um uh rational choice theory economics i think have brought it out before where people seem to think more is better or else you're irrational and um that's what they teach in a lot of universities uh on marketing and it's just contrary but if you put the torah first and you and you pursue it like that crown the way you mentioned it just it actually brings life more rewarding and i've met like you say many people that are well to do but they're just not happy they're not fulfilled yeah i mean look if someone could spend some time in a in a jewish neighborhood an orthodox jewish home and someone who is scholarly and of course good meadows of course they'll see they'll see the the value of their learning torah and how it it like filters down into the family life how these people are truly happy even if they don't have that much and those that are wealthy that are you know filled with torah that they're modest they're somewhat modest i mean again are they really wasting their money and how they're wasting their money probably not there are there are those that do but if you could get um spend some time with some of these people you'll see um okay so that's it wow wow well i mean yeah modest i love that the small amount that you mentioned the mahara the small amount of flour and that that is enough to suffice and uh for a day for a day for daily breakfast it doesn't mean um you have to amass that much anyway it could go bad so make sure you know when i first got married and i wanted to study my wife at the time told me as long as we have food on the table i don't care not interested in wealth and um my kids got to see it broke hashem all right well that's beautiful so rabbi we're not on for next week as we've mentioned and then you've got passover coming up and soon and so we're gonna we've got to take a couple of weeks off don't we yeah because we're we're we're we're in the middle of the campaign but i think we reached our goal it seems like we've reached our goal and raising money to supply families we have 30 families that we're helping of course there may be more if people want to continue to give they can go onto the website or una.com youtube channel we have rabbi brideowicz gave a two-minute uh spiel we'll call it a two-minute uh russia on the mitzvah of giving and helping people for pesach to get through the holidays and so there's a link for the for the actual um campaign at the bottom i think it's a minute and a half message and that's the best way to go about doing it so the more money we have the more money we have to give away so that's the goal so i think we were trying to raise i think 7 500 and before i came on we were at 7 000. so we have to go hey let's push him over the edge folks hey reach out given a.com or go to his youtube channel you been a uh uh youtube channel check it out find that link uh rabbi breidawicz just a wonderful scholar a minute and a half you'll you'll get the link to that let's push them over the edge folks you guys that are out there all over the planet i see we got people in germany i see we got people uh uh online in the united states even people down in the islands it's so good to see people from all over uh the planet check in uh at the noahide world center uh classes here and it's just a joy uh to to be with you um rabbi poston and i'm loving this beyond the seven series and the 48 ways most of all so we're off next week we'll probably uh for a couple of weeks we'll keep you uprised so till then uh uh we're going to sign off for now rabbi unless you got any final words i just want to mention that i'm going to put the link in this description box it'll be near the bottom what are you called the chat box it'll be near the bottom and i want to wish everybody a hug right whether you're jewish or not jewish right you're celebrating or um helping us celebrate or participating on whatever level you do in this uh we'll call it a new calendar year in terms of uh the first of nissan it's uh it's an amazing amazing um i mean the light jewish life is just so full of all kinds of good things that not just delicious not just wisdom there's simcha right there's hope for a better world and everyone who's watching and i know that you you probably feel the same way i do so just keep watching keep learning and feel you're participating also on some level in the tikkun olam maybe by sharing with your pagan neighbors or people who are like just nice decent people there is such a um a fountain of wisdom to tap into and keep sharing wow beautiful beautiful so folks we're signing out have a great day thank you once again rabbi bye for now [Music] is