(Way# 29) NOT CLAIMING CREDIT: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] hey good day everybody welcome back to beyond the seven we are on roku live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston i want to thank you all uh our viewers there on our new international noahide network on the roku station um i've played beyond the seven many many many times so far with uh uh rabbi poston hopefully you're familiar with who he is um he's uh the founder of yebene in jerusalem he does a lot of outreach there and uh we've been at these broadcasts now almost a couple years now uh but of late we've been doing a series uh uh a well-known series called the 48 ways uh to wisdom and today we're doing part uh so those of you on roku if you want to interact with you with us you're welcome or invited to come to uh social media on to uh the noah hyde world center facebook or youtube page so that's noahide world center uh they're kind enough to let us broadcast with there and rabbi heim goldberg there is my rabbi and he lets us broadcast there so it's always beautiful but it's always a joy to be with rabbi poston in jerusalem rabbi poston stays up real late it's 11 30 p.m in israel after shabbat and uh rabbi poston you're live on the air i i want to thank you for this class i knew i loved the 48 ways to wisdom and we got part 29 today so i'm going to just turn it over to you rabbi you're live on the air with our even our roku uh channel as well thank you very much dan i want to just welcome everybody who's watching right now and whoever comes on later and watches it as a recorded uh video um first of all congratulations on this new roku i don't know we hope it grows and touches people's lives breaking through the cyber streams and getting the word out because that's what it's about right uh kim mizion torah from out of jerusalem comes the torah i know you have also speakers from around the world but uh bro so we're here we're happy it's uh it's mochi shabbat saturday night shabbat is over it's always like a little bit of uh you know i'm not going to say a downer it's not a downer but it's like you know you just let shabbas go it's just unbelievable uplifting experience last 25 hours and uh so we also have malava malka we also escort the the queen right um just an amazing experience after shabbat as well uh we had a great time at abdullah we had some guests we laughed and we thought we said torah words of torah throughout surah sli sheeth the third meal the final meal of shabbat and i'm just happy to be here with you now well it was our pleasure sharing wonderful material with us i just want to point to the book behind me the 40 ways to wisdom this is based on a mission in perky i vote in the sixth chapter the 48 i say let's say um not just ways but a ways to acquire torah right we left egypt the israelites left egypt and it took a 49-day journey till we received the torah on the 50th day and these are the ways which one should and it's really anybody integrate yeah wants to acquire wisdom should integrate in their lives according to hebrews kenyan to make an acquisition of this particular trait and uh i really feel as i go deeper and deeper i don't think i can do the justice that ravenoch weinberg when he spoke with his jovial you know personality very charismatic and the way he spoke to these the series that is on tapes which you can listen to as well he spoke to young college students and he spoke their language he gave examples and i just never feel that i could give um you know i'm not trying to copy him in that sense in his personality so my the my way of delivery is very different um we give we go through a lot of source material at the end i try to give over uh most of what he says in his book and some touch on the points that he speaks about in his actual lectures um but this is one i say as i get further and further it's like harder and harder for me to in to feel like i made a real kenyan and that's the goal of preparing the shears to review what i've learned all those years that i was in the yeshiva and that i hopefully acquired some of these and i think like we called subconsciously have you know put into practice i really have uh tried you know you're being humble we really appreciate your rabbi this one is really hard because it's called not taking credit so in hebrew it's eno and there's two different ways we're going to look at it number one we're talking about arrogance if someone takes credit now just try to imagine for a second because this is the way i'm looking at it i'm in a partnership with god right i have a job in this world but i have a senior partner okay now i have a role to play but he has a greater role to play so when i accomplish let's say we said protocol we have a torah right this is what god asked me to do um and whatever else i set out in my life to accomplish and i hit those markers where i've accomplished it am i gonna take credit or am i going to really take pleasure in the fact that i'm a partner i have a senior partner and he's doing most of the work and he's already done most of the work and he's doing most of the work all the energy all of the the even the ideas that i have sometimes see this is me taking credit again uh comes from him right all of a sudden you know whether you're daydreaming or you're in your sleep or you're in meditation and you come across this unbelievable wow this is going to change the world this is going to make such a mark and then who's who's who's going to take credit for that well remember he put that idea in my head so always the main thing is in the first idea we're going to talk about is basically giving credit to where credit is due and taking pleasure right because we all have self-worth we all have an issue with self-esteem and we're not going to belittle it but we do need to give the credit to a kurdish barack oh to the blessed the holy one blessed be he and not take full credit and not even take credit at least for ourselves but take pleasure in our accomplishments that's going to be for sure the other idea and we'll talk about this hopefully towards the end remember it's a partnership but don't uh retain the credit in other words all the goodness that i've accomplished and acquired i shouldn't hold on to i should give it away now in terms of wealth if oh if only i won the lottery i'm gonna i'm gonna be such a big philanthropist right that's my dream what happens to most people when they win the lottery they go broke i don't know you know they got cousins from abroad they come out of the woodwork yeah you know they use they they're not using the money wisely and before you know it they're not only broke they're in debt their lives are ruined they be i don't know saying that everybody becomes like this obviously there's going to be exceptions you have to be very strong they become drug addicts they they whatever it is just to stay on that level of uh you know if they increase their you know their the way they live their life and they want to maintain that then they become thieves i mean they become untrustworthy there's all kinds of horrible stories we hear out there obviously it's not everybody but so one of the ideas this wealth and this wealth of information having the torah having torah wisdom not retaining it for yourself but giving it away right so that's going to be the second part but no there's two ways to read this so we're going to stick with the first in the beginning um basically an arrogant person cannot learn how can you learn right we certainly said in perkavos who's wise right because we're trying to we um we're trying to gain wisdom that's the goal here so if you're arrogant how are you supposed to learn from everyone as perky ava says a wise who's wise one who learns from everybody but if you think so much of yourself and so little of the other person why would i even ask him a question or her question why should i involve myself in trying to gain any wisdom from this person when i'm looking down at them or i'm thinking i cannot get any gold you know the the wisdom nuggets from this person so that's going to be you know like the we call it the overall idea of how can you ever gain wisdom if you're arrogant so basically this idea is there are subtle traps of pride and arrogance that we have to examine so that we don't we don't fall into this trap so basically the main thing is claiming credit for your accomplishments now why not right everyone has self-worth self-esteem so again the main thing is one should definitely take pleasure take the pleasure in your accomplishments and what greater pleasure is there than knowing you have a senior partner who loves you who's an absolute i would say billionaire but that's that's wrong to say we're talking about trillionaire we're talking about gazillionaire we're talking about someone who has an unlimited budget right i got his farm your senior partner he's willing to write a check for you for anything you want and i'm not joking i'm totally serious here right um wish i could read my handwriting i wrote a few notes for myself um i think there was one idea and i don't want to be too political but there was once a politician in recent history and he got in big trouble for it i totally understand why he basically said you didn't build it [Laughter] now i think his intent was good but it came out all wrong um it was obama president hussein barack obama i think you know not everyone's from all over the world so you're not all americans watching this um but i don't really understand what he was trying to say maybe he was from a communist point of view but see america has a certain greatness that they they were creative they put people on the moon i mean they went to space i mean an amazing accomplishments and he really belittled them um by saying you know you didn't build it now what was he i think what was he trying to say i'm not here to defend him uh i think it was take you know it was probably wrong and taken wrong and all that but when someone accomplishes like there was people who before you set you know they were trailblazers you know what i mean i don't really know all that much about all of the you know scientists who discovered things but there were scientists before them that set precedence and theories and proved their theories and could have been over hundreds of years laid the groundwork um the infrastructure you have in america okay it needs a it needs a you know to be rebuilt but you know when you have um you know some factory that's able to distribute some good product to the world of course someone built the trucks someone else built the road someone else built the the red lights you know the the traffic lights and people are not getting in accidents while they're driving to deliver whatever it is so of course i mean you didn't build it of course you built it you have to take some pleasure you have to take the pleasure and i think he like you know put a you know a hole in everyone's tire you know a flat tire no you have to take some pleasure but the arrogance the pride that is where you're gonna have a big problem on another level it's almost the antithesis of the jewish people is asaf right rome right talk about um when israel's up rome is down when israel is down rome is up has nothing to do with rome has to do with israel right rome asav whoever if you don't know who that is that's a saw i think it's saying pronounce in english um you know talking about yaakov's uh so when he was born he was born hairy right i don't know exactly how they pronounce it in english a hairy mantle he was he was ready rudy he was full of hair and the word asav in hebrews is like it's almost like esau right i in shin v he came out a soy a soy means fully made he was fully made meaning like he had no room for growth he came out like a fully hairy man right like no growth there's no total arrogance you imagine you're like i don't know a couple hours born and you're like you're looking at this babies fully hairy fully you know like looked like a man yeah a little abnormal yeah but asuy asaf has a certain arrogance obviously we're not talking about every single person who comes from asap ultimate the general trait of that nation uh and christianity comes from that so i don't know how that fits in but i'm sure someone would have an idea but basically it's a certain arrogance that we haven't made there's nothing we have to do we're fully developed fully developed and that i think when we talk about the antithesis and the opposite of of of the jewish people um another like i've already mentioned that the perkial vote says who is wise one who learns from every man one second i lost my papers there uh which mission is that um that would be in chapter four uh missional one benzoma would say who is wise one who learns from every man in hebrew just to know he made me call adam and there's a verse in psalms 119 chapter 119 verse 99. you want to read or you want me to read it i'll pull it up rabbi give me a second here psalm 119 and what verse 99 scrolling down here uh 99 says from all my teachers i gain understanding for your testimonies are my conversation i mean i understand what it says about uh from all my teachers we're talking about everyone is your teacher right you walk down the street you look like okay maybe he's disheveled maybe he looks like a bum maybe he looks uneducated but everyone has an experience everyone has some wisdom to share right especially hopefully the older the older you are the more wise you become hopefully that's not always the case but hopefully um back into my um my overall um overview and so basically if someone is arrogant and very prideful they wouldn't be interested in ideas from other people um also it causes complacency as i mentioned about asap you feel you already have everything you know what's left what is left to learn i know it all now that's going to lead us to another idea and that is an alcoholics anonymous 12-step programs there is a very interesting idea and that is an idea that we are not god right i don't know a lot of problems exist with um that's i mean addictions of all kind um i'm just looking for a certain thing on my computer i'm not having an easy time here let's see maybe it's here here okay so there's a book called at not god it's written by ernest kurtz it's a history of alcoholics anonymous and i just found this on the on the on the browser when i looked in not god because when i was involved with let's say recovery investigating recovery and going through process myself so one of my mentors basically was um explaining this philosophy called not god and i i don't remember who he was quoting but a much earlier philosopher i'm not sure who's carl young but basically the idea is that when someone is involved in addiction i mean they're in such denial they it's like idol worship they really believe that their god now they won't say it but they think that they're all powerful and they don't need any help from anybody else and nobody can tell what to do i mean it's a real problem with arrogance but in order to begin a recovery process you basically have to come to conclusion whatever i'm doing ain't working it's not working so basically you kind of swallow i guess i don't remember it's the red pill or the blue pill in the matrix but you basically need to swallow the pill of truth right the hard pill of truth that you are not god right because basically it's idle worship you know this arrogance and this pride it's only going to kill you you know pete what are they called the families come and they try to um have an intervention with you and usually mission say usually but at some point before the intervention for sure the person is in denial and that's why they come to that point where they figure listen this is like our last chance you have to know that we love you and that we are objectively you know it's not subjective anymore we're objectively all together in this and we feel that you're damaging yourself of course you're damaging others and you have to know you're not god so i'm going to lead into this other idea and i mentioned in the beginning how we are a partner with god now i've spoken about this idea of the 72 letter name of god which really means it's a 72 triplets there's actually 72 three-letter names of god if you want to investigate it it's in exodus chapter 14 verses 19 20 and 21. how does it work i've already expressed it before but i'll review it you take the first letter of what actually let me just explain these are the three verses that are in um what you call back to back with uh consecutive verses that have 72 letters i never checked to see if there were any other verses that have exodus chapter 14 verses 19 20 and 21 yeah 19 20 21 these three consecutive verses have 70 the just reading the verses themselves are absolutely fascinating to see the glory of god saving the jewish people okay 19 says then the angel of hashem who had been going in front of the israelite camp moved and went behind them and the pillar of cloud moved away from in front of them and stood behind them and he came between the camp of egypt in the camp of israel and there were the cloud and the darkness and it illuminated the night and one did not draw near the other all night long and moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the lord led the sea with the strong east wind all night and he made the sea into dry land and the water split like when you really meditate on these verses we're talking about like the the ultimate in salvation right when you really but we're not going to deal with the verses themselves okay you read it you can meditate on it and it's absolutely fascinating but it's almost like scientific we're the the torah is a code so how does the three letter names these 72 three-letter names of god work you take the first letter in verse 19 the last letter in verse 20 and then the first letter in verse 21 that's name number one then name number two is the second letter in the first and third verse with the second to the last letter in the middle verse and you go all the way through now you have a chart you have 72 three letter names of god now if you break it in half you're talking about verses 1 through 36 and then 37 to 72. so name number one and name number 37 are still going to be significant and so the word is ani ani is going to be the 37th name and vuhu is going to be the first name so what is the this is what we say aniva what is what are we saying on sukkot when we're shaking hoshi and hoshan uh right i mean you see those christian videos of jc walking through jcpenney walking through the streets of jerusalem and they're waving these palms well they got it from us this is what we do we rave we we we shake the palms and we say aniva what are we saying i and he save us now ani is me i the who and him who's him well it's either god and me or it's me and god we're partners we're partners in the salvation don't you get it right so keep this in mind this is this the when you break up the name exactly in half meaning the first of a series of 72 and then of course the 37th right in other words you break it down into two charts you have one link big chart of the 72 letter names and then you just break in half number one and then number 37 this is aniva who okay it's like an unbelievable concept that how do we not remember that we have a senior partner he's a senior partner right not us and that's the the gist of it to remember that he he's he's got more experience more wisdom more money more everything and he's allowed me to be his partner so i have to keep that modesty that humility in check um what about natural habits i mean natural tendencies that we have whether it's think about a genius right you got a guy you can re like what they call that photographic memory is that a kid okay there are people who can build and and you know build these natural talents but you know what a lot of them come naturally and we should be we should take pleasure not pride it's a very it's a very important thing because first of all i think in modesty itself you don't want an in her eye you don't want people looking at you with jealousy so even if you have these natural talents talents i don't think it's a good idea to to go around and try to especially take credit for some of these things take pleasure if if god gave you a good constitution uh your your parents maybe your father i don't know whatever your parents and your grandparents they had they were healthy and they were strong so then you inherited it and you maintained it and you you toned it down so to speak you know what i mean you did your exercises you constantly you know eat well whatever it okay so take pleasure in your part but remember who gave it to you right when you're a genius and you have photographic memory so again we're not talking about the person that built it up from scratch and that's a possibility but take pleasure don't take pride that that'll ruin you you know same thing all your accomplishments you know and there's some really fascinating examples that he gives so now i want to go to the book itself and go through some of his ideas and some of his stories that he tells tells what imagine you want a million dollar lottery okay i mean i do know people that play the numbers games very seriously and if they would win which they usually don't but if they would win they would probably take credit oh my god i got the right numbers but what about all these numbers came in yeah did you play that same number through your whole life i mean oh i was the was that counter that i went to was you know that time they're looking on their watch you know there's so many variables of why you won that you cannot take credit you know you imagine you're boasting attributing your wealth your new wealth to your intelligence i'm gonna call it luck i don't know we don't like the word luck obviously it was a sham that caused it to happen but at least why take credit i mean it's just like the most ridiculous thing that you're gonna hold this winning lottery ticket and say it was because of me i mean instead thank the almighty thank hashem right you don't take pride in winning the lottery but take pleasure in the gift that the almighty has given you right this idea of taking pleasure not pride is going to always be the appropriate response to any of the blessings we have especially for our natural talents even our accomplishments and of course our righteous acts we're going to get into this idea that this is why god created you to do the torah in the midst right for the non-jew you're also talking about whatever torah admits that you have and let's explore this idea of ano as we said ano moccitova liatsumo basically it means not taking credit for your talents and accomplishments this applies to everything in life okay i think we talked enough about the natural talents but he does give some interesting examples let's say for like for example dna is inherited so there are certain people that have a good constitution they claim they have an iron stomach they never get sick they never got food poisoning i mean imagine you have a roommate or you're in college or you have a friend who says i would never say this it might be true it might be true about me i rarely get sick when am i going to go around and give myself an iron hurrah okay might not know what that means but it's called the evil eye you don't want to get people jealous you don't need that kind of attention for um negativity to come into your life by boasting about these things that you didn't even do anything about if you don't get sick it's because god gave you you know i don't know maybe you were young you ate all the dirt off the floor i have no idea what causes uh someone to have sometimes a constitution strong immune system other than what hashem granted him or her right what about people with really good looks right flowing hair high cheekbones you know some people are very naturally uh just very intelligent you know you this is an easy trap to fall into i think it's something you did um the main thing again is take pleasure not pride it's actually irrational to take credit for them now what about just the general you should take pride in your accomplishments pride um but not i'm sorry we do we end up taking pride which is wrong but there's a certain uh like i said a certain pleasure and there is a certain amount of pride which should help you know a healthy type of pride that if it's not arrogant then that's good um so the idea is that no you couldn't have done it by yourself right that you were given god-given skills and and resources if you didn't have this you wouldn't have been able to achieve it um i just wrote a side note for myself to mention what president obama said you didn't build it i just couldn't believe that he said this and it takes all the air out of the out of the tires you know what i mean um but of course you have to have a certain amount of i don't know if pride's the word a certain amount of and it's not just pleasure but it's a certain knowing that you had the senior partner who gave you the gift bar hashem right how many times we would say broke hashem every day should say it a hundred times a day if you ask me um he the rosh hashima mentions consider all the support and help you received along the way that made your accomplishment possible many people contributed to your success including your parents teachers and mentors imagine you know the fact that you could read and write and i don't know who's listening to this but imagine you could read and write hopefully everyone listening to is in this position well guess what you had parents who pushed you who said yeah you can go and play you know street hockey after school but you have to first do your homework or your teachers that you know gave you assignments and then like really checked with you and gave you personal attention you know you'll remember that teacher for the rest of your life that motivated you it's true that you did it but you did have help you had motivation maybe you your parents even hired tutors or the school itself uh matched you up with the right i don't know older students or whatever it was so you have a lot of hakara satova a lot of gratitude for hashem arranging this you know a lot of hakarso tov to your teachers and your parents don't forget that in other words there is a certain pride knowing i can read and write but not make sure it doesn't fall into arrogance arrogance will blind you um here's an example i mean you know sometimes we take things for granted but you know nobody's gonna say you know look i gotta check for five thousand dollars today and you know what i did with it i put it in the bank well that's what you're supposed to do with it so also you know when you're supposed to say how smart you are you know look sometimes that that is how it happens but if someone tells you this you look at them dumbfounded it's patently absurd to take pride in depositing the check because that was a sensible and rational thing to do so too using your time your abilities your efforts to accomplish things um it's obviously it's rational to do this so don't take any uh there's no don't justify with this with pride just take pleasure in knowing you're using your time wisely and perhaps thank your parents or your teachers or whoever mentored you in in making sure that you had good time management skills on the other side don't take pride in avoiding self-destructive behavior the example he gives like oh my god i was at the dinner table and i had this really sharp knife and i just felt like cutting myself and cutting my nose off so i held it back i mean come on this is like a ridiculous thing right so of course you're going to hold it's not a it's not an insane thing to do to want to cut your nose off right and you're going to take pride in this be careful is obviously ridiculous it doesn't make sense to boast about not hurting yourself no the truth is if someone had been a habitual whether it's drug addict gambler look there is a point where you do you know again but because you had help you would help from hashem you would help from your friends get up from your mentors there is a certain amount of self-worth and self-esteem that you should have a healthy amount to know that you overcame but you didn't do it yourself just keep this in mind someone gets freed from prison i shouldn't say freed a breakout he bro somebody delivered to him in the cake a file right remember those those old movies how did the guy get out of prison or someone came with a very strong machine and came to the outside wall of the prison and hooked up the chains and then pulled off you know the window or whatever it broke down the wall when you're in prison and you're able to escape usually it's because someone from the outside sprung you that's a word they they freed you so too when you're in god forbid like came coming through a dark place these addictions or any kind of dark place a very bad character trait that you had a extremely hard time overcoming if you did overcome it you should take pleasure in the fact that you were a partner but you have a senior partner who really you know you needed someone from the outside to free you now he speaks about the idea of self-righteous pride arrogance about one's goodness is the most insidious and dangerous form of pride nothing leads to more destruction than the idolag who is so utterly convinced that his righteousness of his righteousness that paints all of his actions even the most evil with the brush of the greater good and he mentioned some names they're all yamashima zikron hitler stalin pol pot and other death spots justified the murder of millions of innocent people all in the name of a higher ideal and the betterment of humanity even for the person who's truly performing good deeds and surfacing mankind there's no room for arrogance now this is a mishna in perky and this is really i think what where the words themselves come from even though this is in the 48 ways the idea of don't moxie don't retain or don't give yourself credit it says in perky i wrote chapter two it depends which version you're using and it's number eight on uh on in my book but it says rabban yochanan benzekai received the tradition from hillel and sharma he used to say if you have learned much torah which hopefully many people here watching this they're into torah it says do not take credit for yourself it is for this that you have been formed in other words you were created to obey the creator have obedience to follow the crit to love the creator and to work on your character all this whatever torah does for you whether it teaches you how to do the mitzvahs whether it teaches you how to um work in your character and everything in between well what are you going to do so you accomplished a lot in the torah world learning and accomplishment do not take credit for yourself so those are the x words the exact words al toxic now i mentioned in the very beginning there's another way to look at don't retain this goodness for yourself the torah is called good so the torah that you learn you i'm telling you you want to you want to give it away don't retain it for yourself this is the most valuable thing this is more than any bank account you could ever have right this is priceless the wisdom you learn give it away share it with people you run into so we'll talk about that also okay so this is like it fits in well if you've learned much torah do not take credit for yourself because this is what you're created to do think about it like this don't retain it for yourself because it was you should give it away this is what you were created to do we're going to talk more about this hopefully we have time and we'll go on with it taking credit for performing misters places your focus on yourself like oh yeah i did this and i did this and i did this kindness and i i gave to this charity and i spent x amount of hours in this soup kitchen this is what you were created to do don't take credit take pleasure in the fact that you were able to do this that hashem gave the opportunity that you're i'm not saying wealthy enough to but you are you know okay enough to you didn't have to if you're working eight hours a day on let's say not even eight hours you have two jobs one is eight hours the other six to eight hours can you imagine our people they do they have two three jobs just to stay they're not going to be able to really participate that much in disgusted projects in the right but you know what if shem grants you a little bit of reprieve and you're able to pay your bills so you might find time until you thank hashem for giving the opportunity to serve him it's a taking pleasure in your accomplishments and not not doing it arrogantly so basically i just repeat taking credit and performing mixes places your focus on yourself when the focus should really be on attaching yourself to hashem the will of the creator which obviously dwarfs all other needs and considerations now another idea it's not the last one but beware of arrogant people first of all insanity is contagious you know when you're around very arrogant people hopefully the their their attributes their attitudes should not wear off but arrogant people are consumed with their with themselves and they don't respect or value other people of course they're they're looking down at everyone around them their only consideration is what they desire now we have to think about ourselves we're also selfish we're also arrogant so we want to be selfless we want to be available we want to be a service to the creator right and what did these arrogant people do when they look at other people they're just tools ah they're just you know meat you know they're they're uh you know they're to be used so to speak and arrogant people don't recognize other people are really human beings you know and of course we want to get out of that we don't want to think of other people as just meat or you know objects to be used and they have no compunction about stepping on others hurting them or even casting them aside um i think i i want to look up narcissism the way he describes this i i'm not an expert on these these um terms but from the little that i know about narcissism maybe someone could write in the comments or let us know he mentions about an arrogant person can destroy their own spouse or their children and they who exist only to be a source of gratification and to derive pleasure from in other words the person is only using everyone else for their own selfish needs they're unable to recognize their own children's humanity and and they don't give their children any self worth and he can make them feel worthless unless they live up to that person's expectations and serving and self-serving needs the arrogant person looks down on others and is willing to walk all over them if there are obstacles in his path so correct me i don't know a narcissist or narcissism that pride leads to contempt while we know that humility leads to compassion and gratitude and by the way i mean god says and i'll tell you where he says it in deuteronomy chapter 13 verse 5. if you want to read that one verse 5 reads you shall follow the lord your god you should walk so we understand this to means this this means follow his torah follow god's torah but also his character traits and at the end of the verse one says cleave to him cleaving that intimacy again the whole torah and what do we know about god we know god about god from the torah follow his behaviors we don't always you know god's invisible he's beyond our understanding but what's the very first thing he did in the torah well besides creating man and bringing him his wife which is a great hesitant a great kindness right he clothed he clothed the naked and at the very end right moses dies nobody's going to know where he's buried well who buried him god himself burying the dead you see the whole book is about kindness to others and what we learn is you want to learn you want to know what a book is about read the first chapter read the last chapter and you're going to figure out everything in between is basically surrounding that concept well that's what the torah is the torah is an instruction manual of how to follow god's ways and his ways are ways of kindness the very first thing he did was clothe the naked and he helped bury the dead these this is what we have to do so in the comment on rashi he mentions what does it mean to cleave him cleave to his ways bestow kindness bury the dead visit the sick right he visited avraham that's somewhere in the middle right well beginning of genesis but it's not in the first paragraph is not the last paragraph but um you want to follow his behaviors so this is and hashem and we mentioned before the humility of hashem when you find his greatness that's where you find his humility i want to explain the the gematria how gamachia works every letter has a value for example alif is one bet is two you go on right so pay is 80. sonic is 90. coupe is 100. every letter has a number you can easily find these on you know google gomatria how it works there are other numbers there are other number systems gamachi is not like a singular system there's different levels so there's also a thing called the miloy the way that the fullness of the letter so just like alif which is a single letter also has a gematria called its fullness which means alif lamid pay the letter spelled out even though you say gimo there's a there's a word that you can describe the letter so now you take the fullness of every one of the letters and you can find the chart on this as well where every letter like aleph is um 111 because alif lamid pay it adds up trust me you can do your math 111. that is 412. all the numbers are very high even though we said they're 1 through 100 or 1 through 400 right but because the last few letters are in the multiples of hundreds but each letter is a very small number you know starting from one to ten and then multiples of tens so when you get when you look at the value of the fullness it's god's own name yud and hey and vol i don't need to mention the second hey you'd have hey they're the smallest of these in other words god's greatness is within his name right we trust in him his name and his kindness and yet what does he he obviously he developed the whole world the the created the whole world developed languages the holy language the holy tongue hebrew the name itself yud and hain above and hey it says where god when you find his greatness you find his humility in the own creation of this world which language has he says he spoke and created the world the language itself that he created his own name is the smallest and i say the smallest you could take any word anywhere take a dictionary and the smallest value of the meloy is always going to be his name no matter what because the yud in the hand above are like miles away in terms of num in terms of the value of number it's the smallest numbers of all the letters you can look it on the chart and you see any combination of any letter any word will always be twice three four times whatever hashem's name is it's unbelievable it's just absolutely fascinating so we have to know how it's really hard to get your head around where you find his greatness you find his humility and that's just an example um but we we have to follow his way to be humble so imagine taking all this pride and arrogance in our accomplishments we have a senior partner who's just unbelievable he's just so good to us um now the next idea is just it's it's it's a it's an obstacle to wisdom right if again these are the 40 ways to wisdom so pride or hear arrogance is one of the biggest obstacles to attaining wisdom and i mentioned already in perky although chapter four missionary one where who is wise one who learns from everyone okay we talked about that recognize the damage deprived pride leaves in its wake right arrogant prevents a person for admitting he's wrong and learning that which he doesn't know yet since he mistaken beliefs he knows everything or almost everything instead of being concerned with discovering the truth the person turns interchanges of ideas into sensitive battlefields where everything is taken personally stuck in a defensive mode can't even hear what's being said and we i'm sure we've all experienced our own lives bits and pieces of this some are more exaggerated some are more toned down it depends on our own uh refinement but we hit we hit um a rocky road sometimes so we have to work on this we all have to work on it it's not just left to those people that we can all objectively say are arrogant we all experience arrogance in our life whereas a humble person is open to being shown what that is wrong sometimes and takes pleasure in getting closer to the truth and learning to do the right thing just keep this in mind when jews sit and learn in a baked midrash in a study all you always see what they call the kharta system this is the traditional system you have two people battling it over you're gonna sit by yourself you're gonna make mistakes and you're gonna solidify those mistakes by thinking you're right but when you're sitting with someone else and you're reading the text and you're trying to explain it you have somebody and hopefully you trust them and they're they're not just there to get you right they'll explain to you no you're that's not how to read it there's a comment here this is the emphasis of the verse this is really what it means this is the insight i'm sure that it's and you back it up and you say how do you know this this is how you you know exchange ideas um if i'm not mistaken i think it was rebbe you cannot schlockish right these were famous i don't want to go into the whole story how they became it's an absolutely fascinating story uh maybe i will reach lucas was ahead of the bandits i mean he was he became about truly wasn't religious apparently he was hanging out in the trees in the forest everybody he saw down below that was vulnerable he had his band of bandits and they came and they would steal it wasn't like robin hood who stole from the rich against the poor i think he kept it right anyway but he was a powerful man and he was into wealth for the wrong reasons greed or whatever and he was into beauty and he saw rabbi yochanan in a uh pond or some kind of a lake and uh he thought robion was a woman rubio and i'm not sure if he had long hair but he was quite um he was very white he had a a certain glow and i think he was very heavy okay so basically i don't know he must have thought he he was a woman so he jumps into the room into this lake uh i guess to be intimate with the okana not knowing it was a man and of course now he realizes from yokonon and yokonan realized why this head of the bandits came to um attach himself so to speak and he said um i see you're very powerful you have a lot of potential a lot of potential and you know what i see you're into beauty what if i gave you my sister to marry but on condition that you sit and study torah and you know what ray schlakosh was willing and ready and he said you know what i'll do it and anyway so in the mean i'm not going to skip through the whole story but basically that was an amazing person he became really strong in torah became one of the greatest rabbis that ever lived at the time and the story concludes what i'm trying to say is that when they became havrusas they became learning partners and when um ray schlankisch died so they brought in several different study partners for abyokonan and everyone he was learning with seemed to agree with him now he was a very smart guy you know he was extremely learned he was the greatest rabbi but he didn't he was not interested in a yes man he was not interested in someone who was going to sit across through him and i guess keep his mouth shut and knuck he was open to the criticism he was extremely humble and he wanted the truth and the only way to get to that was to battle for the truth in obviously a you know very dignified way not to insult and put the other person down but anyway so be grateful to your teachers it would be arrogant to say when your teacher tells you something oh this is so simple i knew it all along if someone is taking time to teach you acknowledge his effort and express your gratitude now what's the greatest medicine against arrogance what happens if a big talker you know you're a big talker let's say and even a bigger person a great knowledgeable righteous person walks in the room you're going to shut your mouth you are going to be so humbled i mean every number was i think i said it last week or something or the week before the guy who opens his mouth like like when you open your mouth sometimes it's better to keep your mouth shut because when you open your mouth you show everybody how stupid you are right so imagine this genius you're in the you're in the presence of like an albert einstein and you're going to tell over some theory of you know quantum mechanics or gravity i mean this is the time and opportunity to sit and absorb so the arrogance is unbelievable so the best medicine against arrogance is the realization that god put us on the earth to achieve great things acknowledging this obligation to attain greatness makes you realize that matter what you've done you've not yet reached you haven't even begun to fulfill your potential i mean i spoke about aniva who i'm a partner with him i mean i have this life force called god who's given me and is willing to give me such greatness now i want to mention because we just passed tuba i don't want to digress too much but i do want to say this unbelievable idea it's an unbelievable idea there's a little bit of an argument discussion in the gemara when was the world really created was it created in what we call rosh hashanah in the seventh month it's amazing it's the seventh month why would god ever create a world in the seventh month wouldn't he create in in nissan what we call the first month the springtime it's an amazing discussion in the gemara i'm not sure the gemara actually concludes but toastless does and other people do that the truth is it was really created in nissan and yet we celebrate let's just say rosh hashanah we call rosh hashanah and in the seventh month why is that so first of all there's another idea that 40 days before a person usually people express before they're born but it doesn't really mean that it says before they're conceived before they're conceived a voice comes out and says this person is going to marry this person that's amazing this now again back to the idea that who's going to be rich who's going to be strong who's going to be healthy how long you're going to live a lot of this is decided before you're even born who are you going to marry unbelievable so just think about this a second 40 days before conception now back to the original discussion when was the world actually created i'm going to cut it really short the world was created in nissan when was it conceived it was conceived on rosh hashanah in other words god thought about creating the world when 40 days before in other words it was conceived on rosh hashanah and came into being in nissan pesach time but when what's 40 days before that 40 days before this when the the voice goes out and says this person's going to marry that person that means the original point of all potential came 40 days before the actual conception i hope you're following me 40 days before rosh hashanah is to that's so in other words we say i mean it's a holiday it's an actual religious rabbi bridewith spoke about it in his last year the amazing history of what we call tubav so just keep this in mind it's an amazing idea that on the flip side according to the opinion that the world was actually created in tishrei which is the seventh month so that it was conceived when it was conceived in nissan and what's 40 days before the first of nisan to bespot the 15th of shefat now let me just i know that you're you're trying to do the math and you think i'm making a mistake i should have mentioned that it's not really the first of nissan or nor the first of of tishrei but it's five days before because what you're doing is like this we say man was created on the sixth day of creation but the world was created on the 25th of ello or now we're doing the flip side it was on the 25th of the adar and then it was created on the first of nissan so that's how you came out to the 40 days so if anybody was doing the math and said hey rabbi it ain't coming out i forgot to mention this important fact okay so i hope you're all there with me so just think about what happens on to b'shvat tu beshvat is when the trees are bare but it's a new year for the trees the new years because when the sap is beginning behind the scenes to draw up which is eventually going to feed or nourish the leaves that are about to come where the the fruits that haven't yet even developed but it's all the potential the potential the potential is there that we we have to tap into this potential and that that's why for those who are watching this non-jews on shabbat on this is the day to pray this is the way the data really try to tap into that potential of the coming year it's going to cross over on rosh hashanah and that's basically how we hold as i mentioned that we actually hold the world is actually physically created in nissan that the world was only conceived of in tishrei and 40 days before that is today so this is where all the potential you can really tap into the potential so anyway this is something that we should know that we have unbelievable untapped potential and so in other words if you came out like asov thinking i am a self-made i am fully i have no growth there's nothing to grow it's fully grown so convert yourself from an asov to a a true uh i'm going to say a gear to shop slash ben noah maybe 100 to judaism anything but an asap right i mean or the or as i casted speaks about the top shabbat at least know that there is some there's a possibility of the good of asov through truva okay so i hope that was interesting ideas um i do want to speak a little bit about what i mentioned in the beginning but don't retaining this give it away um how did i want to get to that point um i do speak many times about this one i did i think it falls in line very nicely with what we call the creature but i mentioned to the listeners here on your station before that every one of the 613 mitzvahs all have a verse everyone has a very succinct verse that describes right the chauffeur on rosh hashanah the waving of the lulav and the esrog on sukkot whatever it is there's misses are described very descriptive of what it is so many jews obviously they know oh yes it's a big mitzvah to learn torah when i ask jews who are not that knowledgeable well where's the verse we all know it's a big mitzvah they usually point to joshua where it says you should meditate in it day and night very nice but nobody brings that as the verse as the source because the verse whatever source has to be from the five books of moses you don't bring me from psalms don't bring me from proverbs don't bring me from any of the prophets the real source is one of the six thirteen mitzvahs has to come from the five books of moses so the source they bring is from joshua no way let's go to the source of the torah and it's in the shema itself it says you shall teach your son live you shall teach your son how does teaching have to do with learning i thought i asked what's the mitzvah to learn oh you're going to show me and it's to do with teaching so what's the logic behind it yes it's true that it says you shall teach torah to your sons and if you don't have sons to your neighbors all your students are like children because the only way to teach is to learn you have to learn first and the reason i'm bringing this up because this week's parasha we just read the shema is in the parsha and we go through this reaction there's actually three paragraphs that's the first paragraph is in our week's parsha then the second paragraph is in next week's parsha and the third paragraph believe it or not is back in numbers so there's no real order to it and the gemara wants to know what's the order why is it the order and one of the ideas brought down is that in in chapter in the first paragraph it speaks about learning right it does could be so we're going to call that teaching tournament but it's it's um learning torah but the truth is it's singular it's singular the first paragraph is singular the second paragraph is actually plural and the second paragraph is actually talking about going in teaching also as well meaning learning and teaching and then in the third paragraph it's all about doing and we have an order the most important thing in the beginning in your own personal development to learn is to learn but there's a next step and that is to do what to teach and then the third step is to do and we talk about doing is the ultimate goal of learning anyway so from learning then teaching and then doing there's a progression and that is an important lesson we learned in this week's parsha so in terms of we spoke about this so many times but in terms of who did i learn the most from they asked the rabbis who did you learn the most from so you would think people are going to say yeah my rabbis i sat in this professor's class or i went to einstein i learned unbelievable stuff no i learned a tremendous amount from my teachers it's true but i even learned more from my colleagues that's khabruta that study partner and who did i learn the absolutely most from my students so again where's the arrogance where's the arrogance can you imagine the professor unbelievable arrogance you think they'd learn anything from their students you think they would even admit it unbelievable so this i hope i hope i got this idea remember the idea was not taking credit not claiming credit and if you're going to say i learned the most from my students i don't know maybe the pro maybe the university is going to say we want our money back from paying you all this money you you're the professor and you're learning from your students well they got the whole thing wrong if they understand anything about education they would understand hopefully what i just said and expressed that this person learned the most from the students because of the questions that they would ask required me as a professor to go back and re-examine what i taught them express it in a clearer language perhaps even before trying to guess what their questions might be knowing that i have to know the information before i get up on that podium or that stage or in front of however many this could be five students or five pungent students right how to make a fool of myself i better know my stuff well so however it is uh arrogance is definitely something that prevents uh wisdom we learned something we reviewed that we know that which we know already some of this is extremely common common sense but it's a good it's a good time to review and i apologize to the rebbe i i don't give it over in in any any in any sense like he did with his charisma um but we did the best we can okay so thank you awesome job somebody online named metamorphosis says love loves these lectures where can i ask questions as a noah hyde and i said well ask and i'll try to get it in as long as it's relevant and not off topic uh so i'm waiting to see if he sends a question here rabbi but also you can always uh reach out to uh rabbi poston at ybenay.com rabbi can they is there a contact you page anything there on ybnei.com i'm going to put out i'll type in my email address right now so um they know you're giving it a calm but here i'll put in our let's see if i hit that let's see what happens did it pop up we're on uh on youtube yeah i don't see it okay you know what i think i have to do i think i have to make spaces nope there it is i got her okay yeah i got it up there well hopefully you don't get inundated with trolls i mean folks be kind when you're speaking with the rabbi i mean we appreciate everything he does and shares and we don't want those with agendas to be wasting such a busy man's time his time is so valuable and he's doing so much work and we're thankful um also you know last shout out to those uh on our roku station you can always uh find more uh of rabbi aaron david poston's material at yemeni.com beautiful beautiful material his uh his uh youtube page is just about ready to roll a million uh views in just over six years beautiful uh rabbi you know excellent work um for you know that's such a large number in a short period of time um i know that rabbi breidowitz profound speaker and i know he gets plenty of views but this is cumulative you're doing great work and you're inspirational to me and i'm thankful that you're doing these uh uh my friend barbara in germany she says yes she's thankful too uh just you know be encouraged just to put where you know put in the paper pleasure as you said myself right because the people like you who helped promote uh yiban i'm sure many of those views came as a result of that um so thank you very much also all right so uh hashem willing are we tentatively on for next uh same time next week for part 30 or is your schedule i'll tell you i i have a huge shabbaton extremely very busy sean is coming up but i think that if i prepare properly i should be able to um give it over so we'll do the best we can to be prepared yeah well i always try to tag you in advance by like thursday to see if you're on or off i mean i don't want to promise anybody that you're going live but um i know that those that tune into this class are usually those that have a more of an aptitude for study and they want to hear what you've got to share and it means a lot to them uh it's my birthday parsha my wife's making a huge uh uh kidush we're having a lot of people for shabbat um beautiful it's also our anniversary and so we're doing quite a quite a big picture a big deal so we're going to do the best we can because i believe in consistency we'll talk about that when we get to in one of the 40 ways also as well well rabbi i appreciate it so we're not sure if we're on for next week but uh he says if he can prepare um you know i always advertise it well in advance uh out there on social media um so uh you know we try to be consistent and we're making good ground i mean we're almost coming up to part 30 of the 48 ways it's been a long road uh especially uh i love this series and i'm looking forward for those of you on roku watching um i haven't uploaded yet but rabbi poston did a beautiful book series uh called the six constant mitzvos and uh it was a beautiful beautiful uh lesson series he took the time to prepare and share with us and i'll be getting that uploaded soon it's just there's a lot of encoding uh involved in getting it transferred to play on the television station and it takes up a lot of my time but i have such joy and uh if i if i didn't come to classes like this and get recharged myself i don't know if i could keep going but thank you rabbi poster for sharing and staying up so late in jerusalem it's now like it's going on 1am there in jerusalem and there you are still sharon live with the world i'm so appreciative that some rabbis are willing to share the light of torah out of the nation of israel and it's always exciting so hashem willing will be back at the same time next week live i'll make sure everybody knows well in advance so until then have a wonderful wonderful week folks [Music] 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