(Way# 23) A GOOD HEART: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to another episode live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston we've missed him these last few weeks he's been continuing in his beyond the seven series teaching us the 48 ways to wisdom and today we've got part 23 i'm so excited each and every step has a a virtue an angle something you can integrate into your life to just live and walk with with uh with wisdom and grow closer to hashem let's just tune right in see what the rabbi's got for us today it's so good to be with you rabbi we missed you glad to be back with you you're live it's your class sir it's our class and it's everyone who's participating as well it's all of your class as well um tonight we are in uh number 23 of the 48 ways i just just love uh presenting this book it's not my book it's students of the rabbi friend actually personal friends of mine and uh they summed up the rabbis well-known seminar the 48 ways to wisdom again this is ancient wisdom that goes way back to the revelation of mount sinai itself or even the preparation towards mount sinai as the jewish people peoples israel was leaving egypt and it took 49 days to he you know the 50th day we received the torah at mount sinai and there's preparation so preparation to receive wisdom you have to be a mensch you have to be a vessel right so this is where we're at today you know in the year 5 7 81 right of creation we're all hopefully trying to make ourselves vessels this subject tonight it's called a good heart now it sounds very vague and the question is what it what exactly does it mean to develop or have a good heart and how is that a way in terms of developing wisdom or acquiring wisdom it sounds like maybe from a very simplistic point of view of course you need a good heart that would be great but what does it mean in terms of uh acquiring wisdom so the first thing i want to just mention is that we do have right there's a pussic there's a verse in deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 5. um let me before we read it so the idea let me just sum up what i think the idea is and that is that one should develop an awareness that they have two hearts okay and it doesn't mean that your other heart is bad but we have two hearts one is called within our hearts we have a inclination to do good and we have an inclination to do the opposite of good okay we'll call it the it's a hurrah the evil inclination so just as a like a foundation to what we're discussing here is just first of all to be aware that there is such a thing right now let's go to the verse in deuteronomy 6 verse 5. if you want to read it says and you shall love the lord your god with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your means now i would translate this honestly not as with all your heart yes of course you should love god with all your heart there's no question and with all your your inner being your soul and with all your means with all of your resources it's true but i would translate instead of the word heart i would translate it as with all your hearts and why do i say that because you have to look at the hebrew i hope that some of the all of the students anybody who's listening who's listening should be interested in learning hebrew of course you have to learn the alphabet then you have to learn the words and grammar and it's complicated and it's time consuming but it's definitely worth it if you want to learn and maybe you know what through osmosis through just watching and listening you'll you'll catch uh some of the phrases but this is one of the most important jewish concepts you'll ever learn that we have two hearts okay and how do we look at the hebrew it says behold love it should say if it was going to be translated correctly as with your heart it should have said libha with one bet but it's spelled bet so there's two bets it means ploy it's plural you have two hearts yeah look at rashi um i'll just read it for you with all your hearts it's translated that way hebrew because the double that bet in la vaga instead of the usual libra which is one bet suggests love him with your two inclinations the good and the evil meaning we have inclination so we want to develop a good heart now the truth is we can serve and we must serve hashem as this verse tells you serve hashem with all your hearts with even that inclination to do evil now that sounds like what do you call it um um thank god oxymoronic i forget some of these words it sounds heretical right it sounds absolutely blasphemous contradictory what do you mean so hopefully through this lesson we'll find out number one it's serving hashem with both your hearts but be aware then the bottom line the fundamental idea here is be aware that you actually have this conflict within you and we'll have to find out how again how does this by developing your good heart or even developing your yetzer hara to do good how that is um one of the 48 ways to acquiring wisdom okay so the the roshiva begins his seminar in this idea that um he discussed this idea of course we have two hearts but simple your mother asks you you know could you please take out the garbage can you please do this or can you help me with the the groceries and you're in the middle watching a good tv show or a movie or playing on your i don't know your ipad or you're playing a game and you tell your mother in a minute when i'm ready right now i'm busy it's exciting what i'm doing now you have an opportunity to admit to do a mitzvah the myths that is keyboard out of the aim honoring your parents right fearing your parents on your parents you have an opportunity but something gets in the way right and then we call that the yates of hurrah i just want to stop for one minute and just also discuss the word mitzvah right it is spelled mem sadiq hey and it means command we we discussed this before um but when we talk about matzah it's really the same word it seems like it's the same word it's memsatic hey as opposed to men sadiq hey but it's now what's the difference between matzah and that which we're not allowed to eat on passover we're not allowed to be leavened uh the leavening itself or things that are leavened things that are uh you know the yeast uh causes it to puff up we're not allowed to eat things that are the leaven itself or eleventh product products now that in hebrew is called believe it or not it's the same letters almost and we just let me it's almost the same letters as mata mata's mem sadiq hey khamets i'm just going to just reverse it so just practical purpose it's almost the same letters you have a mem and a sonic instead of hey it's a hat and if anybody's familiar with the hebrew letters the difference between a hay and a hat is almost nothing it's one itsy little bit of ink that connects this little piece to the top and then you have a hat so matza and khames are the same letters different order and so it's a very small amount of ink that's true but so what happens when when the mat is left let's call it fermenting right it's just left doing nothing right you just allow you're not working the dough you're just allowing it to rest the active ingredient we'll call yeast right is is is activated and is becoming it's making it uh puffed up we'll call it ego because we're going to discuss that also here it's basically ego we think of the homage we're thinking of because really there's nothing wrong with eating bread all year round it's just a lesson that we learned during pesach that we should take through the rest of the year so the difference between mats and homage is the time left doing nothing so to speak and so it's a very small bit of difference and therefore it's something to be very concerned and careful about once what when their mother comes in and says i need help with the groceries drop what you're doing i mean look we all have the yates hara we all have this inclination to we come first no doesn't mean we come first you want to be selfish and be and come first then do what's right and do the mitzvah because honoring your parents is being selfish you know if you it's your olympia it's your the personal development as a human being and of course the world to come we're talking about eternity here so the the first thing he brings is a few examples like this and uh really you should really jump up and and lend a helping hand so basically every human being has a constant internal struggle and and we have two hearts which i explained already okay and um this idea of belief toth leif that's in hebrew a good heart is a lathe toe i also want to explain another idea just as a foundation we're going to end with this idea hopefully but i want to also drill it in a little bit that if you count the words the words in the torah okay because he actually the word so fair scribe in hebrews so fair so doesn't just mean a scribe like a safer as a book so you would make sense that a scribe is the sofas writing the safer okay in hebrew this is how things work everything's so interrelated but it also means to count so the s so frame the ones we call scribes remember if one letter is missing or an extra letter is there the torah is we call pasu it needs to be fixed it's no good it cannot be read right we don't want to make any uh mistakes in the transmission so it's very important that there's not an extra letter or a letter missing so the supreme must count but we count anyway that's part of learning okay so the first tet tet is the first letter of the word toth okay the first first of all hazal tell us the rabbis teach us that if you dream about the number nine about a tet that's a good sign it's a symmetra it's it's a tremendously deep um positive omen i guess they call it right no it's a cinnamon it's a it's a good sign so relating this idea that the number nine the tet is something good happens to be that the first tet that appears in the torah spells the word tov it actually spells the word good now it happens to be the 33rd word in the bible which means that prior to that tet there are 32 le there are 32 words 32 words and then you have the word tov what's 32 in hebrew 30 is alamed two is a bet so already embedded in the text you have laminbet 32 words and then you have the word toth a good heart lathe is heart a good heart we're going to end on this note also so keep this in mind this lesson we just discussed or maybe i'll bring it up anyway so he he brings examples of why we need to develop this awareness of the struggle that's going on within us so i'm just going to lay it out i'll read his words we want to use our time effectively but you know what we do we have this other inclination we love procrastinating now maybe i'm talking for right so maybe none of the people listening can relate to that sometimes yeah worn out tomorrow five minutes whatever it is another time yeah get tired some days myself uh and i i i'm guilty of procrastinating a little bit just a little bit look we all know that eating healthy is the best right but some of those other things that are so healthy tastes much better so he writes we want to eat healthy but you know what we feel like devouring that cake right now right so these are the inner struggles everyone should be able to relate to these ideas we think that we want to attain wisdom so you could be watching you know an information channel i'm just using i don't even know what channels are out there um you know national geographic i'm sure there's other docu good documentary channels that you can watch in order to acquire wisdom but you know what we end up spacing out watching these uh you know i don't know where to use as silly okay there are times where we need to chill out and just relax and to laugh is very good so obviously watching um you know some comedy or some you know comedians get some joy going yeah what's wrong with that but sometimes we think we're trying to obtain wisdom and we're not using our time wisely and we just like to space out so basically come to the grips come to an awareness that there is this conflict between our soul and our body and that's where i'm going to go to the book of job in um job 31 verse 2. if you want to read it 31 verse 2 now what is the portion of god from above and the heritage of the almighty from on high now yes it seems like it may be a question and there's no answer no within the question is already the answer what is this portion from god and it's a legacy of the almighty from on high let's read the hebrew chelek and all the holy holy books we discussed this idea i'll translate it my way hey is a portion a division now hashem is not divided so what can it possibly be what could it possibly possibly be of a helic of god himself who's on high and it goes on and the legacy the almighty from one eye right what could it possibly be that is talking about our soul our soul is a part of i know god is indivisible right not divisible but yet the word helix seems out of place but it's a portion of god himself and that is who we are and the commentary here by the way i highly recommend for people to involve themselves in learning tanakh to get the art scroll series or you know choose different books and learn through them and so the comment here mentions remember job is claiming innocence he has investigated any wrong doing on his part you know because we basically believe media connected me to measure for measure if bad things are happening to me um and we'll talk about this also later it i should accept it as love from hashem as tohaha as rebuke or punishment when i say punishment we discuss this idea it's really ability to correct what you're doing wrong it's like a sign that you need some correction so the the cr that's what he was doing in this question i am a part of god my my soul is pure it's innocent so why are all these things happening to me and he he the art strokes explains the when it says what is the portion of god above referring to it refers to his creation that's us since hashem's purpose in creating the universe is that righteous people should defy the evil inclination and serve hashem why would hashem punish his loyal servants like a joke and that is really you know if we are we are um pure we have the soul that's pure then why is this inner struggle happening it doesn't make us evil okay but it makes us have a conflict that we have to constantly be choosing between good and evil and that's actually what god himself says to us i place before you life and death good and evil right so this is the trend he says choose good he wants us right a lathe toe if he wants us to choose good okay excellent so what is the soul yearn for right we're talking about it's a part of god it wants to return right we talk about chuba even the concept of truva i think many people translate it as repentance i'm not so sure that's a good translation literal translation means to return yeah to turn to the innocence to be you're already innocent you're to return to the source of that innocence to have that um intimate relationship with your creator and that's that's what juve is really all about so the soul yearns to return to its lofty source to transcend the material world and live in concert in concert with the will of god loving humanity these are things that we would call good a good heart loves humanity seeking justice living with integrity being altruistic and of course being responsible eventually our body will return to the dust of the earth and what the body not only will it return but its whole lifetime desires physical things right it's looking for the ultimate comfort to escape pain and even effort right it's seeking immediate gratification maybe those words are more common in this century than in the past because we have so many things at our fingertips uh maybe they used in the past other terminologies for what we call immediate or instant gratification but basically it's the enticement towards animalistic the desires like eating sleeping and of course lust so these two hearts or inclinations as we've been using them really to understand that is a constant clash and it all is creating dilemmas in our daily lives right if you want to be triumphant in this battle first you have to be aware right being aware of the struggling sides and then you focus on your innate desire to be good and we'll talk about this because everyone really does want to be good or maybe there's maybe there are some really evil people i have in hashem i don't think i've met any but i i imagine it's true that there are some really bad people but for the most of us we really want to be good people and we can also assume that others are like us that want to really be good all right so a person who follows his good heart not only gets off his bed to help his mother as we discussed before but he does it with joy without an ounce of complaining okay so now how to how to right one way to distinguish between the ones of your soul and the desire of your of your body is to ask yourself two simple questions what do i want to do and what do i feel like doing so hopefully what you want to do is really truly what your your your soul wants what you feel like doing is most likely what your body wants to do okay so you have to learn to be sensitive to these two competing uh voices that are going in within your head within your heart um remember the real you wants to choose good remember that's what god said i place before you life and death by good you're choosing life right keep this in mind following the voice of the good heart and reject the voice of the selfish heart do what you really want not what you feel like doing now being good versus looking good that's the next paragraph look there's counterfeits right looking good is counterfeit good right a lot of real change it's maybe it's also instant gratification maybe it's also for long term but you know you're doing what society has defined as respectful and the truth is in many societies at least in western societies many things really are quite objective if they say this is good right but we want to um well here here are the you know the things that we fall into and like keeping up with the joneses as they say or here in jewish style called keeping up with the schwartz's right what respectful um you know uh occupation or success or some kind of status like a lucrative career the right kind of car you know the right kind of clothes the right kind of house right and for younger people how many facebook friends do you have or how many followers do you have on instagram or some of these other social media things right how many people liked it right i mean it's like wow i can't wait to see and check in so rather than lending i'm sorry rather than leading to genuine self-respect this is false it's a false vision of what of being good being good it hollows out at the core of a person leaving him actually empty and insecure a fraud who in quiet desperation always needs the approval and validation of others just happens to be we just read parsha shalak the idea that um the the spies right there were two spies ten spies right the two were the good spies the ten were came back with an evil report we shouldn't go in the land it's not worth it we're going to get defeated we can't fight them we can't win right whereas khalid and yeshua are like this is what god wants we can win we got hashem behind us right he's with us and [Music] eve what's called um right of right is the day that we accepted this report and it says that hatred came into the world this idea of what do you mean hatred came into the world if we really look deep at what the spies were saying they had a certain lack of self-worth and self-respect that's really what it comes down to and the secret of unfortunately this causes hatred of hating another right comes from this self awareness that you are a part of god from above when you think right a lot of ego involved and there's a lot of lack of of self-worth so what happens is there's a thing called projection and let's say like this you think the other person hates you and then in return this gives you justification to hate the other person in other words you feel such a lack of self respect or self-worth that you projected what you actually feel on them because that's really where it's coming from so it's starting with you or imposing yeah and then you have now justified why you hate them only because you in your imagination thought they hated you because you have your low self image so there are no shortcuts to real self respect it takes work and for me to just say okay look you created the image of god you know isn't that enough no people have to work on it learn torah become a balamuna become a real master of faith having faith knowing who and what your neshama is capable of right have some self-worth and self-respect and it will change the way you view other people right you won't have that as i said oh i kind of hate myself they hate me too therefore i hate them and it's just like a vicious circle right you got to get out of that point self-respect comes not from looking outward right how many times people i know all they do is complain about other people and how bad other and their life is now ruined because of you i mean come on we have no concept of the value of who they are and how much they can accomplish in life and that whatever someone else says or does or looks at them the wrong way is absolutely meaningless now i don't mean it's absolutely meanings but in the real sense it is i mean of course we all care and of course it's gonna um have some impact on our lives but it shouldn't have the impact that it's having it shouldn't have the negative impact on our self value and our self-worth that it we give it right um so basically um okay i just summed up it's always easier to look at others in a bad light then you never have to face your own self and it's worked and the work is actually could be enjoyable when you make a way to say it you make progress and maybe you need external help i know whether it's a therapist a rabbi right a good friend you know a parent somebody who could be objective objectivity is going to have a lot to do with this because it's also the ego just does a tremendous amount of harm now the next topic is um what's more important than life itself a cause a good cause here or let's say values right so the first story he mentions and i'll tell you a real personal story it's questions uh imagine right if you had to be in auschwitz auschwitz is one of the most famous unfortunate infamous uh concentration camps where millions of jews were slaughtered by the nazis now you were there what would you rather be a typical nazi guard you have an opportunity it's in your imagination or to be a prisoner would you prefer the horrors of auschwitz and almost certain death of being a healthy death camp guard what would you do you had the choice so there was a student at aisha torah and his father came to visit him and this story was told to me by rabbi muttiburger and so this father came to visit his son but he wouldn't step into the ishida it became through his experience in auschwitz became extremely anti-religious now it could be he was already anti-religious but compounded and he just could not see himself even stepping in he was furious his son was choosing to live a religious lifestyle after everything that he had been through in auschwitz he had given up on his faith in god so why is his son choosing this path it seemed ridiculous to the father but he had a very deep conversation with rabbi berger outside of the yeshiva and rabbi berger posed the question okay i you know nobody is going to be in your shoes nobody's judging you but a simple question after all you experienced if you had to relive it again you had this choice would you be a nazi guard or would you i mean if you choose to be the prisoner all over again right what would you choose and this person had to admit there's no way you know the the real true hatred you know for the the mass murder of jews was very real and how wrong it was for this person he knew that he would choose to be a martyr all over again as opposed to uh he gives a few other examples um he's traveling to the far east and you know there's prison systems there's corrupt uh police and um the secret police come into your hotel room and they tell you you know the people you're traveling with they've been identified as dangerous spies now you know that they're not spies but they're trying to get you to i guess um say something about where the where you can find your friends so that they can info yeah so a life imprisonment maybe even death where they're threatening to kill you to kill you if you don't confess up i mean who says your blood is any redder anyway what would you do would you be again would you be true to yourself and be moral and not tell them because you know they're not spies okay and there's a few other examples so um one of the famous of course you know if for a jew he's not allowed to commit murder obviously also a uh a non-jew um but we're obligated to die instead of uh committing murder so somebody a non-jew let's say even nanju puts his head a gun to your head and says i want you to kill you one person or a thousand people it makes no difference okay or i'm going to kill you we have to eat the bullet we should take the bullet so we're in a constant struggle listen our body wants to live another day you know why not why not right bow down to the side i'm going to kill you oh what's the big deal bomb down to the idol and then tomorrow i'll just say it was all fake you know nobody no god knows and you have to stand up for something so what are you willing to live for right if you're willing to die if you already know you're willing to die for this right so the truth is the roshi have always asked the question after you've already you have to know what you're willing to die for right you have to get these things clear but the truth is we don't want you to be a martyr we don't we're not interested in you dying we're interested to know we have 120 years what are you willing to live for if you already die from these moral issues at least try to be a decent human being right you have to struggle take it as a real struggle and it may not be ever come down to where you have to kill right or be killed that's the extreme example but um make goodness um your goal in living be willing to give up comforts and distractions i want to just quote the next verse the next in the book the next time you're confronted with a moral dilemma and you find yourself tempted to do the wrong thing realize that you'll be cheating yourself out of one of them of your most primal and deepest needs the desire to truly be good okay so going back to the the last paragraph the idea of every human really wants to be great going back to that original verse we read in job we are real the source of our soul where who we are where we come from is i think that's where the awareness you know is going to come from uh for the desire to to fight this this this evil um there is an interesting quote i want to focus on it now there's a difference between king david and um where's it one second um here it is actually yeah i'm actually a little bit lost now because i have these pages that are lots of notes yeah i'm like skipping to the near the end but um they're doing between abraham and king david so for example if you go to in nehemiah chapter 9 verse 8. chapter 9 verse 8 verse 8 reads and you found his heart faithful before you and you made the covenant with him to give the land of the canaanites the hittites the amorites the parasites and the jebusites and the gurgashites to give to his seed and you kept your words for you are righteous now from context we are talking about called the first hebrew the abraham himself god found in his heart you found his heart faithful abraham had a faithful heart masata there's two hearts i would have translated as you found his heart i would have translated you found his hearts god made a covenant and he promised the land of canaan okay they were the seven nations to give to his seed right you kept your word you kept your promise fine so in terms of abraham so what happens there's a contrast here so here what abraham did uh he transformed his yate sahara into good that's what he did that's what avraham did okay you found his hearts faithful so that's abraham but king david on the other hand go to psalms 109 verse 22. psalms 22 reads for i am poor and needy and my heart has died within me wow i translate this word heart as heart not hearts in hebrews the liby with one bet that king david had to slaughter his negative part see abraham took both aspects and was loyal he was able to transform the negative and serve hashem with both beautiful david knew his limitation slaughtered that's why it says my heart has died within me not that it's past and passive but that he actually slaughtered so there's two ways to go about doing this and to sum it up how really we could we have to do both i mean everyone's a little bit different some people could be more like abraham some people are going to be more like david but most try to um to do both let me just read the comment here in terms of david david was unable to overcome his yatahara so he slaughtered him now that is a way to overcome it but it's not the same way that most of us have to and should and harness this idea and we're going to talk about this as well see david's yazar was too strong for him to harness all of its energy and channel his goodness so instead he had to kill it by suppressing the unmanageable portion of its passions right so based on this we can conclude that in order to acquire torah properly a person must harness all the passions of the evil inclination to the best of his ability and direct it towards energetic torah study all right we're going to give a few examples i'm going to go back into the last paragraph of the original book that we're using and then we'll go into some of the sources that will expound some of these ideas so not only do we desire to be good deep down we also yearn for greatness no one wants to be average what are you asking oh you want to be average it doesn't even resonate right you can already you can hardly even speak and profess these words we want to be great right remember the soul the divine spark within us craves to be like god himself now this is a little strange because you know certain cri you know some of the watchers might be uh former christians some might even still profess to believe but one of the things i've heard like why is it that the um and maybe it's not entirely true for every type of christian but why do they not want to be like jesus in other words you might ask oh would jesus do this or not and that would help determine your your behavioral pattern but to actually be like jesus right it's like well we're supposed to be like god see if you were a christian you're supposed to be like that mean you'd be an orthodox jew and that would be a problem for you wouldn't it right but for for us we have to be like god i mean again not all christians believe that jesus is god but i think that's the basic uh concept in christianity so there's a big you know there was a big movement in the messianic and um you know hebrew roots that the christian church the mainline christian church was basically oh no this this hebrew roots is a bad thing we're losing people to becoming noah hides to converting to orthodox judaism right oh you want to be like jesus well where do you think that's going to bring you it's like that's kind of like off off bounds for some of these people it's a real it's a real big issue but we we're talking about god himself and and that's a you know it's hard to imagine but god gave us a manual that's what the torah is you want to be like god right what did god do he he clothed the naked the very first you know chapter in genesis right for second chapter third chapter he closed the naked and all throughout he tells us how to find how to work on ourselves it's the it's the the torah is the antidote it's the actual anti-vote for the yetzer right and what do we see at the end god himself buries moses to bury the dead it's worth it it's kindness it's being imagined being a vessel to be like god you want to be like god feed the poor clothe the naked um bury the dead right yeah beautiful i'm just gonna repeat this the soul the divine spark within each and every one of us crave e like god himself because it's a helix it's a portion of elohim from hashem himself who is above us we all have the potential to change the world you know i think about other religions and i don't want to get on to islam per se but i know they have a fatalistic view there's a very negative view it's very fatalistic and um i think this is part of the reason that islam has not made any major changes in you know progress in in science in the world i mean they have found certain things that made big leaps but those those inventions or whatever you want to call them are far and few between there's not a constant struggle to make this change but but the jew the jewish people have i mean we already know i have to say you know i don't know if it's 23 25 of all know might even be bigger percentage of nobel prize winners or people who have really made an impact on the world when they when the the israelite nation is less than point zero i think two it might even be another zero two whatever it is it's extremely small percentage of world population and yet the impact that the jewish nation has had and i think it's driven from this idea that they know whether they're religious or not there's this you know it's filtered down through the generations that they are part of god himself and to be godlike and to create change positive um change from optimism right having a deep sense of optimism in the world so we have the potential to change the world and the measure says that every person should say this right and that's jew and non-jew this is you know the world was created for me now knowing this i think rabbi what's also spoken i know the world was created for me all me but guess what just like it was created for me and i have to think it was created for me so to you dan i know that you have the same obligation to say the same thing it's not about ego is it's about that i have the potential such great potential to make positive changes so this does not mean that it's your world to do whatever you feel like doing with it remember you're god's caretaker we think of ourselves as partners with god you're responsible for everything that happens in the world don't pass the buck now here's a little plug for anti-semitism if this book was written years ago but it's okay if anti-semitism is on the rise across the globe if inter-marriage rates are spiraling and assimilation is rampant own the problem it's your world and you are responsible okay uh the last paragraph of this read yes the effort required is enormous it's it's work and you may not know what strategy to employ we have a saying in perkier vote right that um you have an obligation to begin we make the effort we don't have to finish it's not about finishing it's not the end product that we have to be so concerned about that is hashem we're a partner with god and we have to take the initiative we cannot aspire to greatness by sitting on the couch the path to greatness is through the gate of responsibility remember undertaking it is not a burden it's actually a pleasure right uh the roshiv actually talked about a story about a guy who was on a boat i guess the hudson river is quite polluted maybe today maybe they they worked it out where it's not so polluted but back in the day around manhattan there's the hudson river and they have these uh showboat these tourist boats and uh a man was on the boat and he saw another passenger fall over now this is i'm just telling you how he described because he he was from new york i really only visited the place and i never even went and tried to go fishing or boating or anything in the hudson river but i guess if you end up falling in the hudson river you could probably die from just you know the water right it's so i don't want to i don't i don't know let's say growth for poison sewage live sewage is spilled into the river anyway this person went overboard to save this person and they succeeded they saved the person and they asked the person you know is being interviewed later what was the most dramatic or greatest day of your entire life and he said that day that i went in and saved a human life you know even though it would be like the worst who who would want to go into the hudson river right and god forbid there are there could be ramifications health ramifications long term even after mercury yeah but yet saving a human life you know whether they can contact and saw the children and grandchildren or whatever it's just an amazing idea okay so let's go into some of the other sources that i didn't mention yet one of um i do have a gamora here i do want to read it but i want to go i mean i want to read some of the it might take too much time um in deuteronomy i know in deuteronomy chapter 10 verse right we all know that the jew is famous for circumcision right that's the circumcision on the foreskin of the member of the sexual member but nevertheless read the deuteronomy it says you shall circumcise the foreskin of your heart therefore and be no more stiff-necked okay so um the double your hearts but okay it's talking to many people um this is the whole verse is in plural it's not it's not really a problem but what does it mean obviously we don't physically cut into our pound of flesh right that famous movie or play i don't even know what it's called but apparently there was a i think it's shakespeare i'm not even sure ignorant i am but apparently there was a play in the uh a few hundred years ago famous play they even say it was some anti-semitic because the jew lent i think he lent money whatever it was anyway the point is here um that you cannot physically circumcise a heart so it's work it's inner work obviously it means it's inner work there's there you should seek advice right from your rabbi from your therapist whatever from your wife and your spouse right what what am i doing wrong how can i improve my life how can i be a better human being that's what it means in terms of circumcising your heart just to give you a uh a superficial idea um king solomon what did he ask for so before we let's go read uh proverbs chapter 14 33. give me a second proverbs 14 33 reads wisdom rests in the heart of an understanding man but in the midst of the fools it is known so we began by asking how is having a good heart a preparation or a way to acquire wisdom so this is king solomon in proverbs and he he says wisdom rests in the heart of an understanding man so there's two ideas here believe navone the word navone is the word for someone who is um understanding and um okay so we're talking about itself right will rest on such a person so i think everyone is aware of the fact that king solomon was the wisest man but was he always and how did he acquire this so it was a gift it was really a gift from hashem you know he god asked whatever you want i'll give you and what did he ask for so if you you don't have to go now but i'll just read through it in first kings chapter 3 verses 5 through 12. i'll just read through it real quickly in gibbon the lord appeared to solomon in dream by night and god said ask what i shall give you and solomon in his humility and i think he had to be quite wise and i that's also where when there's no ego involved i'll just tell you one of the things a certain rabbi told me when i first became religious and i was interested in wisdom he said that um someone without an ego is going to really make it in in the wisdom department that's very strange i mean i thought it was you know because maybe he realized i wasn't so smart but maybe i was willing to work on my ego and push it aside he gave me an example let's say you have a a mr fixit a guy walks in and this is his job he walks in he sees you know he got called there's a problem something's broken so there are all kinds of types of mr fixit men okay so the guy who's able to look and perceive what the problem is and fix it let's say you know long term right not just put on a band-aid it's because he's coming in with no bias he can see the problem see if you come in already think you know the problem or you have whatever it is whatever biases personal biases you have so you they're going to block you from seeing objectively what the problem is if the ego is not there and you're objectively looking you'll be able to come to a conclusion of what the problem is and then the next step is what you need to do to fix it right so he said people without the ego are the best kinds of mr fixes because they're coming in without any biases now i'm going to take this same statement and apply it to our lives right because we're fixing our lives and as long as our ego is involved it is going to mess things up it's going to put a glaze it's not going to be a clear picture you want a clear picture you mean and you know this is a process don't uh you know anyway so going back to the story of king solomon what did he ask for and solomon said you have done your servant dove in my father great kindness he walked before you in truth and rightness he's talking about his father and uprightness of heart with you on and on and on but at the end i'm sorry what is that give therefore your servant an understanding heart to judge your people that's what he had he could have asked for anything but he this is what he asked for an understanding heart similar to we just read in proverbs 14 33 the wisdom rests in the heart of an understanding man and this is what he asked for and what does god say well first of all the narrator tells us the speech pleased the lord that solomon had asked for this thing and then god responds because you asked for this thing you didn't ask for all these other things you could have asked for a long life you could have asked for riches none of that you asked for you could have asked for the life of your enemies all these things but you asked for yourself understanding to discern judgment behold done according to your word and i have given you a wise and understanding heart the truth is he also gave him everything else or through that he also received everything else because once you have an understanding heart there's no reason why you wouldn't be successful in all other areas um i want to just read you i'll have you read hosea chapter 14 verse 10. give me a second to find it rabbi sure oh i gotta go to the prophets my eyesight's getting dimmer i gotta wear uh uh reading glasses more often rabbi so um i want you to know there's also a way you could um enlarge your screen you know there's not not when you see what if you saw what i've got i've got three screens and i've got 20 tabs going on and all this broadcast i'm sorry hosea chapter 14. forgive me okay and which verse 10. who is wise and will understand these discerning and will know them for the ways of the lord are straight and the righteous shall walk in them and the rebellious shall stumble on them so look not everybody is going to be i mean again we don't know how far advanced solomon was in his wisdom before he asked for it but he must have been pretty wise already to ask for wisdom right um what about the rest of us who are not so um gifted you know intellectually so remember a good heart towards acquiring wisdoms we're talking about so from jose it sounds like who's going to be wise and understand these things are the righteous again working on in a moral way working your way up a moral ladder is going to help you acquire intellectual gifts as well um there's a famous statement that says if you have this yet this inclination to do evil drag him along into the debate midrash and it's a very strange thing you you want to leave him outside the baby josh why would you bring him this yates or this evil inclination in with you to the bait midrash bait midrash means to study all i mean it's just just it's mind-boggling so we're talking about the study hall is the place where wisdom is tested right you want to bring this inclination in and not leave them necessarily outside similar to the way we discuss the idea of you know the different abraham and david not necessarily um as a what's the word uh you know to slaughter him but perhaps to implore employ him okay for good um but this is trying to answer like in other words what in the world is a good heart doing here in terms of in terms of acquiring torah right either you have it or you don't no it's it's not so it's it's it actually is like this there's two ideas brought down firstly an intellectually gifted person uh oh i think we froze rabbi we you you locked up um it's not on my end um same thing happened earlier today uh coming out of israel with uh a rabbi uh kaufman when we did uh his pierce class uh unfortunately these things happen it's the internet um i think my stream rate is still looking good as everybody catching me out there yeah my stream rates looking strong yeah i'm beaming up there at 10 megabytes a second oh you're back rabbi can you hear me i can hear you i'm so glad to be back oh okay forgive me i just want to go back to the idea that um why is this idea the good heart somehow streamlining towards acquiring wisdom right so there's two ideas one that a if you are an intellectually gifted person to begin with right you have to constantly remind yourself this was a gift granted to it by hashem okay um that if you're able to learn on a very high level it's not because you right that's again the ego but to constantly be reminded that this is a gift and to use it to constantly use it for the for the good um there is a mission in percyavote that mentions that if you learned a lot of torah you're not supposed to take credit for it because this very reason you were you were formed okay another um idea the second what about a person who realizes that he has been blessed with a good mind okay so you must take care to constantly improve the mind broadening your knowledge and deepening your ability for comprehension now this happens to be brought down in purchase chapter 2 mission 11. and this relates back to what we started with in a certain sense that rabbi yokonam ben zakai said to students i want you to all go out and tell us to come back and tell me what the straight way the direct yeshua in which a man should cling now his five students all came back with different answers now they all learn them believe it or not within the first 32 verses of genesis very interesting within but uh rabbi as rabbi eliezer ben arach he says a lathe tove leif toe which is our discussion a good heart and your men zakai said you know all the other students they're very nice what they said but all their words are actually included in rebbe eliezer benaroch's words now just think about that because we leif toe if they all learned from different sources within genesis but within the first 32 words and then as i mentioned the 33rd word is the word tov lamidbet 32 is is lathe um so all their learning literally literally was within his words that's on one idea but what i think what he was really saying was all their ideas are not lower than but within in other words leif tov is all-inclusive and everything they had to teach was within this teaching itself and it's so unbelievable not just within the teaching but even within the limu the actual way of learning it is within his first 32 words where he comes out with leif toe because again the first 32 words islamic bet and then the 33rd word is toph anyway by the way it all adds up because actually meant 32 plus the word tov itself is a gamachi of 17. in other words tat is nine love is six and bet is two seventeen so you have lay vomit bet and then you have seventeen how does that equal it equals up to fifty fifty we talk about all the time 50 levels of beena 50 levels of understanding and wisdom wow so it's through this lathe tove and everything i described just being aware of the inner struggle doing the work right the psu game are there the verse is showing right i don't think we skipped anything i think we pretty much went through all the different uh explanation i do have a good more here but i'm going to skip that we don't need to uh there may be one piece i want to share there is an idea that when a we hear good news we make a certain blessing the blessing is blessed are you hashem our god king of the universe who is good and bestows good obama who is good and bestows good so you win the lottery i don't know something really fantastic happened you know very nice god forbid you hear bad news so we say baroque universe who is the truthful judge and we accept it now okay so your good news you say this blessing you hear negative news you say this blessing the gomorrah says that you should feel the same actually exactly that it says you have to say the blessing just like you say the other blessing and they said what do you mean it's two different words so the conclusion is you have to have with the same emotion and that's simcha that's joy now that's very mind-boggling because how do you when accept bad items i'll say seemingly bad tidings with the same level of joy and it's very difficult right it's a very big cycle lesson so i'm trying to find so much here um i think this so it's okay this piece i'm going to read to you it's from the back the commentaries in the back it's not exactly it's not that what i just laid out with you was more of a foundation the question here is how does one serve hashem with both his yates hara and his yetzeratov um so which one did i want to read that's gonna be the question i'll start with the rambam the rambam explains that from what was said in the mission the mission says you have to say the blessing over the good just like the bad that there is to make a blessing basement with joy because a person is actually supposed to love hashem with both his yetzer tov and his yetzara right we discussed in between abraham and king david so the kevana is the intent is that a person should place on his heart in other when you hear the bad news you place on your heart to love god and to believe in him just to know he is ultimately in charge of everything even at a time of burning anger now i thought that means when bad things are happening to you but it could also mean when you were experiencing these as well all this is coming from the yetzer of this is part of the inclination that is not so good that at the time meaning that the the actual moment that a person is experiencing he's overwhelmed with anger even within himself because perhaps the news he hears right that the yetzer has control over you also at this very moment at this time a person should place on his heart and love god okay so we're going to use our yetzera and love god the rambam also writes that a person should bless on what we call hara whatever this negative thing is with tuvas hanefish with a full you know peaceful heart by saying right we say every time in the shema and you shall love the lord your god with all your hearts with all your soul and with all your resources with all your might okay that's the rubino yonah explains that when we serve hashem shavuot hashem we serve hashem with our yetzer tov that's how we serve hashem by doing mitzvas and when we um we we should also serve hashem also with our negative inclination by doing what by conquering our evil inclination strengthening ourselves against it and this is how one comes to complete service of hashem by doing both that that that's what it means to serve hashem with your negative inclination because you're kodish you're conquering it he also it's also written in in the name of verbena yonah that when you serve hashem shavuot that by serving hashem with your positive inclination this is what we call hanhagas bamida sarak money use it's it's behaving with mercy it's trying to work on your character in a positive way but what about when you serve hashem with hara this could be when you have to act in a uh akzar youth in a little bit of a cruel way sometimes i remember i had a gamak gamak is a um a free loan society i had to lend money to people i mean it was not my money i was just responsible to to decide who should get it how much how long and i was responsible to collect now if it's a personal loan we're not supposed to be like a creditor so we don't really um hound the person but as a guardian for this fund i had uh certain uh privileges i can't imagine i've had to do some repossessions before rabbi so i know we didn't break anybody's knees but we had co-signers and the co-signers took for responsibility and they had jobs and they had money and i would call up the person who owed the money and say i just want you to know you have a week left until it's due or it's a week overdue and you know your best friend your brother-in-law i don't know whoever you know he co-signed the loan and you know i really feel bad about it but i'm gonna have to call him up and you want to avoid all that so i'm just letting you know in advance you know those are the kind of privileges i had and i call you have to be cruel to be kind in other words some that's cruel right i mean it's nice it is nice right it'd be cool to be kind sometimes so that's what's called using yates around this is how sometimes you have to act with evil people okay then he writes that when you're serving hashem with your yetzer hara shabbat shambitsara is even at a time that you are involved in this world right we're involved in physical in the physical world things to do with goof and things in the physical world and that your intent should be for the sake of heaven like it says in percyavote all of your actions should be for the sake of heaven now the first israel and he writes and i think there's the mara he writes that serving hashem with your yates or toth your positive inclination is when you do what call positive mitzvahs and serving hashem with yet is what we call the negative mitzvahs meaning don'ts right so what is the difference so he writes that our intention be for the the positive inclination is the koch is the ability is the power that is made that brings a person to do all those positive actions with passion and fervor and great efforts and with this power with this potential that would um the mitzvah he should use that when he does positive misses what about using your yates hara your evil inclination so that's the power or the abilities that you that a person brings to refrain to reject to listen and to decline and to be lazy and to prevent himself from um the actions of what god forbids you to do and that's how you can use your hara stand strong but then with this power that a person has he has the ability to do both well in this case the net he can prevent himself from he uses it to prevent himself from violating the negative misses okay there's a lot more to be said but i wanted to just share that um information so in terms of acquiring wisdom like to sum it up to realize to recognize there's this real struggle and you're not alone every human being okay maybe there's a few exceptions you know extremely people and some really extremely evil people right that they just find it so easy to do the right thing or they're always doing the wrong thing no matter how hard they try not to whatever it is right but let's just say 99.9 of us we're not alone we're facing this constant struggle but we have this amazing unique piece of hashem you know that we are creating his image in his likeness right we're just a shadow so to speak right of hashem but that's how pure and i implore you to investigate this is really what life is about we're not created in sin we're not bound to um to hell eternity as some other religions uh prescribe but we have a a truly uh pure soul now it is true there's different levels of our soul and the actual soul itself is pure and we do dirty the lower parts through but they can be rectified they can be rectified and um and that that's what the turret is giving us the the instruction manual for living okay so we'll end there and then next week this round hashem we'll come back and we'll deal with the next one let's take part 24 next week yes now this is very strange trusting wise men so come back stay tuned here we have to say in part 24. awesome so excellent rabbi that was a beautiful lesson i want to thank you all about the heart and having the right heart attitude you did a wonderful job and next week is going to be exciting so hashem willing will be back next week the same time looking forward to hashem well have a wonderful wonderful week folks we'll catch you then [Music] is