(Way# 36) DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM HONOR: 48 Ways with Rabbi Aaron Dovid Poston

[Music] good day everybody welcome back to another episode of beyond the seven live from jerusalem with rabbi aaron david poston uh who i appreciate so much sharing this wonderful series with us the 48 ways to wisdom and today we got a doozy for you part 36 i do encourage everybody to make sure that they uh go over these lessons closely last week was a wonderful one on tocahot uh about loving rebuke very very difficult one but we all need to integrate it and acquire it if we want to uh acquire wisdom so uh we can't go wrong so let's uh uh just jump right in and see how the rabbi's doing today rabbi poston we see you're enjoying your coffee always a joy to be with you uh and thank you so much for staying up late to share with the no hyde world center in the world this wonderful series shalom dancing everybody it's my pleasure to be here with you guys today is another difficult topic to cover we'll get to it right away if you want it's number 36 and the 48 ways to wisdom the 48 49 different character traits that the israelites proceeded in to integrate that's a great word in order to receive the torah in order to receive wisdom and these are um pearls of wisdom that are handed down from the rabbis all the way from mount sinai down to this present day no over my left shoulder ravenous weinberg put together a great seminar based on the mission of perky a vote chapter 6 mishna 6 the 48 ways to wisdom and number 36 is to distance yourself min from hakavod kavod means honor now it literally like if you take the word what is honor honor is heavy his weightiness is presence so you walk into a room and you want everyone to notice you that is what one should distance themselves from the real true honor is from within and one has to be able to recognize that and build their own you know proper proper world view of what honor is and we're talking about in a real sense and not in a fake or counterfeit way of um well that's what we're going to discuss okay so one should distance themselves from let's say the fake honor and hopefully truly uh be able to build up what we're going to talk about tonight is a um healthy uh honorable way to uh to seek let's say uh presence or reality okay so the first thing we have to recognize is that we all seek it okay we all seek it we have a body and we have a soul the the soul is interested in real true reality okay let me just go to my one note because i have a uh a specific point about that that uh it seeks meaning in other words what we truly want in this world is meaning but that's only on a soul level the body is okay with counterfeit pleasures it um it seeks the illusion um we'll call temperance when it comes to the soul and we talk about reality we're talking about eternal reality and it really does seek to do the right thing and have some meaning in life whereas the body is more interested in let's say where they call it there's a term for like instant gratification right pleasures physical pleasures and would even be satisfied with illusion let's just say uh just for the moment right so keeping that in mind we do have to recognize that we all seek it we want it we'll call it recognition or or honor um everyone wants to be admired everyone everyone wants to be respected okay so what do we do so unfortunately you know we seek it in um many many things are even um uh what are contradictory to each other right some are looking let's say using their good looks to seek attention some are using their intelligence to seek intention in attention some are using their wealth some are using power right some people want to say how idealistic they are right some others want to use how pious they are okay so there's things that are let's say on the extremes but we're all broke hashem we're all different and we seek it in different ways so basically one of the most common denominator behind all of them is it's a phony sense of self-esteem and what it actually ends up happening is we feel empty right we actually feel empty let's say you go to a party and you're like i don't know you either feel you're the talk of the town or you you want to present yourself as something you're not okay so you maybe do some exaggeration but you're talking about yourself for three hours so you're the life of the party what happens when you leave you feel so empty you feel so crash i mean like a sugar high yeah i mean it does take a little bit of effort and maybe a lot of effort for some people just to be a little bit more objective and realize it's not about you you know the same questions they're asking you what do you do for a living okay you can ask them to right how's your family are you the oldest do you have how you have you know about your siblings where did you grow up okay so number one i mean it has to be real you have to be truly interested right but how does one distance themselves from honor so one of the main ideas is not to look for respect from others but to find the self-respect find the true respect you should have within yourself right because the roshiva mentions like fool's gold i don't know exactly what fool's gold is but it ain't worth the whole hell of a lot of pyrite yeah okay i mean it could you know a little bit of wind can just blow it away right so what we have to do is we we have to work on attaining what we call genuine self respect and that's only going to come through being good not through looking good right i remember there was a i think it was a comedian i don't remember who it was maybe someone can remind us i think they asked them rodney dangerfield no respect no respect at all that's true that's true that's one that's that's an interesting one i was thinking like oh you look good well it's not no matter how you look but it's how you it's not about how you feel about how you look um right obviously you have to feel good and but some people look if you don't feel good at least look good right so unfortunately that is a a big problem for us in this world so one of the key the key ideas here is to determine what you think is truly meaningful in life and then strive to attain it right there are many who are who are satisfied with themselves because they know who they are they know they're doing important things and they don't need public recognition to reassure themselves of their worth and as i mentioned the very beginning there's a classic body soul conflict okay so we talked about the body is interested in illusions and a quick fix or the moment whereas the soul is looking for what's truly important okay so that's uh something we all just have to recognize and not try to what do you call sweep it under the rug and think this doesn't apply to us um and the idea about seeking approval right chasing honor drives people to do some ridiculous things um so let's say i mean today we have real classic examples of uh what do you call um a profile on a social media right i mean i haven't really seen too much tick tock stuff but i heard i hear there's a lot of issues i think we went to the senate it's causing some real real delusions i mean real real psychological problems with the young young people today um whether it's body shaming or um bullying i mean there's a lot of competition out there and it's creating a lot of listen i really don't know that much about it maybe people could fill us in but apparently it did go to congress and it was a big deal i think there was even like a whistleblower that discussed some of it i don't know whatever would come out of that um but it's a real problem so let's say let's say people would would put on to let's say i'm not so i'm not just talking about tick tock but anything um profiles i even thought i think i even saw an advertisement that said i'm not sure if it's instagram or some of these other things that's the they're all a lot of them are photoshopped things that um you try to make the best impression obviously listen you go for a job interview we all know that first impressions are everything so obviously when it comes to uh being asked because that's what you do in a job interview they're gonna ask you what you do you you should there's no question about it um what's the word list your accomplishments with with pride right um but the fact is that you got the interview that's already that's already saying a lot because whatever you wrote in the cv or whatever it is you handed in order to get the job based on your qualifications so of course you're going to be honest right you don't need to i guess the word is exaggerate or blow things out of proportion or talk about it oh it will haunt you it could haunt you um so he writes the young people today present carefully crafted pages on social media websites to promote a certain image of their life even though it has no bearing on reality they're literally creating first fake persona in order to oppress others so i think many of us can relate to that right knowing that it's out there now even if we don't um resort to these uh what do you call it delusions don't say right but we all fall at times into a trap of jockeying for recognition we boast about our successes seeking approval and accolades to feel validated and important so he mentions the next time you have a conversation see how long it takes for the other person or even judge yourself to start mentioning personal accomplishments now obviously what's wrong with being eager to impress people again if it's a job interview i think you have to right but basically it's a sign that you're not sufficient you don't sufficiently respect yourself and you're trying to either compensate or call it over compensation with an artificial boost from others and and this isn't real so the idea of relying on the approval of others only makes you more called hallo and insecure because deep down you feel you are a fraud now the tom in aravind 13 b we did discuss this idea once before i don't remember which one of the 48 ways but anyone who seeks greatness greatness flees from him right constantly anyone who flees from greatness greatness seeks him so there was a very beautiful teaching over there that was by hillel by the way and hillel is the one i mean he was very humble but he um he made sure that in any discussion i mean basically an argument but it doesn't matter let's say discussion he would always go out of his way to try to present the other side or understand the other side because remember if the other side was right there's no point in arguing but if you do have a [Music] a disagreement at least you have to make sure you understand the other side first and so we call that humility i mean there was a certain act of humility so basically you see him starting off talking about the other side so that's a good that's that's a good um trait and of course that brought him to a certain amount of wisdom and for those that know in tammuric literature and in we would determine most halatha if not like almost everything goes like hillel as opposed to shamai so since we're talking about acquiring wisdom this act of humility i mean really pulling yourself out of the picture i mean even i gave a class on thursday nights abraham why did god choose him right god appeared to him it says a love it doesn't say to avraham and one of the important lessons that cleokar explains is because the word avraham which was his name symbolizes certain greatness he was the of hamon he was the father of many nations as we conceive until today you know two-thirds of the planet uh maybe even really 100 because you talked about even buddhists and hindus have have roots in the six uh children of avraham that he sent to the east with gifts all right that's not really for now but basically the idea was god appeared allah to him his name isn't mentioned because who is his essence his essence was he says i am but just dust and ashes. he wasn't out there you know with a big sign neon sign he was sitting by his tent and saying why don't you come on in i wash your feet i'll give you a little bit of bread right he spoke uh minimally and offered the minimum amount but obviously even though he offered the minimum amount he provided with the maximum service to other people so that's um you know it doesn't matter if you're jewish or not jewish right he is the father of many nations and so he is a um a great role model for us so so an aravind he flees from right from the honor itself flees from those who chase it but it chases those who run away from it um now out of the trap so you have to catch yourself when you're trying to impress others which if you're totally honest with yourself you will figure it out maybe not at the moment but you can figure it out later and try to correct yourself later we're all human we're just flesh and blood one of the examples he gives in some of his in some of his classes imagine it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman but imagine someone who's of the opposite sex who is attractive and they ask you on the street for directions so if and i'm using this as an example i mean it doesn't it doesn't have to be that kind of an example but maybe you know they're wealthy or maybe you know that they uh they have something that you need whatever it is that um you're you look at your own reaction to how you assist that person to get back on the right path if they're lost they're asking a few directions so you could be like mr tourist or mrs tourist a mister's uh tour guide right you're gonna talk to that person with such flair and upbeated uh you know uh emotion enthusiasm why because you're trying to prove yourself to them for some reason so you'll as opposed to the person who's let's say that's attractive right a non you know like as almost if they didn't exist but this person exists and you can see and test yourself um you know what what are you doing to impress this person why are you doing it what's motivating you you want to feel more important you want to prove that you're somebody right so you have to you have to figure out how to drop the illusion right um and actually attain real accomplishments in life right real meaning in life if you have that you're not going to try to do these um illusionary acts when you know you're striving to live a life of integrity and to achieve what is truly important you walk with strength you walk like with your head up and you know who you are and um with a lot of dignity and your own life has weightiness it has meaning and certainly a sense of purpose and you don't need others to give you any self-esteem because you already have it from within um there's another idea here chasing honor and recognition actually becomes pointless now knowing this uh we are conventionals that honor runs after anyone who flees from it fine the people who do not crave the ego boost are the ones who have genuine honor and self-esteem they don't need people to tell them they're important because they know they are important so decide which goals you think are truly important and meaningful and set out to accomplish them make make a plan rise above the clutter and forget about seeking approval okay now this is a very interesting thing and i don't want to bring in the new testament as an example but there is an example in the new testament of what they call um the good samaritan now that itself in the what they call what they call the new testament is actually a very anti-semitic story but people do use that term uh quite um quite a lot so i just want to speak about the idea they have all these different research actually let me just start with this idea that there was recently a rape on a philadelphia train that i believe went through either 27 or 37 different stations until um until the person was caught apprehended or stopped um but people were in this train and they were caught on video with their smartphones just taking pictures i mean why couldn't someone call the police or 911 or whatever the call for help right or actually do something i mean i understand there could be if there's one you know if you're alone you know maybe you feel your own life could be threatened but people have to stand up to do the right thing so um so what happens there's unfortunately an idea that if the more people that are passing by this unfortunate person less people are likely to get involved actually i think it happened in 1964 in 1964 in queens new york there was unfortunately a story about someone who was murdered i think they found out later there were 38 people that heard the screens or knew about what was going on and how they knew whatever i think through the screams maybe they actually opened the windows and saw it was that the incident that led to the development of the 911 system well this i don't know but i've heard this story before that yeah that because 38 people had let it if they had a number they could call and and it was developed in new york that 9-1-1 emergency contact system it makes sense what you're saying i don't know if it's true but i know that there was a whole um they should have did something though right yes that if you see something and you don't say something you could be held responsible meaning if you could have done something about it and you didn't do it uh i do believe there were certain laws that tried to be enacted based on that i don't know if you you are familiar with the seinfeld television series that came out in the late 80s early 90s uh i heard he was jewish so yeah i heard about it yeah the whole crew the whole crew was virtually jewish the point the point being is the when they ended their series i mean it was so popular uh they could have kept going forever and ever and they were getting long bored with it the point is when they finished it their last episode had they were all convicted guilty of breaking something called the good samaritan law uh is how the last episode the final episode was and they played all the uh like the drama and people need to understand that drama is you know being involved in drama uh is is it's nasty in our day and age the way people act derogatory towards others and that's nothing something they should not do but the whole end of that series showed how they they had a camera and they witnessed a crime happening right in front of them and they did nothing about it and that's the point that i think you're bringing out and they were then uh convicted of of that and that's how the series ended and um they brought all these witnesses from previous episodes to show some of the derogatory behavior that went on and i think that that because the show had jewish roots uh in it is they were really trying to get out some of the honest ethics uh that hey you shouldn't act this way a moral message well especially since they're from new york so they probably had more reason i mean i don't know if this happens in the smaller cities but the larger the crowd the less likely people are to do you know likely to do something about it sad yeah sadly um so anyway let's say you met you see somebody who needs help are you gonna help them or not so the moment you start boasting let's say you did it so you boast about it this will remove some of the reward i know it sounds like a crazy idea we're talking metaphysically here so you two people can do the same act we did let's say in different cities and one boasts about what he did to help help somebody save somebody and the other one saved the person as well or did the kind act as well but didn't boast about it somehow in heaven right there is a difference in the reward they will receive so we're relating this idea that um run away or distance yourself from this fake honor again they're going to be times where you need to wake other people up to say look i did it you could do it right it's even written about moshe rabenu right moses um we have the verse let me see where it is i hope i brought the verse and [Music] actually i didn't bring the verse do i have it here but it's it's based on the idea that um a jew was being beaten up in egypt actually i think it was an exodus two where is it yeah i do have it exodus chapter 2 verse 12. so moshe interrupts he gets involved he sees somebody being actually was probably about to be murdered so he he was being beaten up and he turned this way and that way and he saw there was no man so he struck the egyptian and hid him in the sand now in hebrew the the thing called the co he turned this way and that way for what purpose is to see if there was anybody around and there was no one around right now does that mean there was no person or i mean simple shot as we say he must have been alone but we find out later he wasn't because there were other people that were there they actually turned him into the authorities right so it must mean there was no man to step forward right now there's a lot of metaphysical understanding what does it mean that there was no man that he didn't see out of this oh yes it should have any it could reflect an entire generation or future converts there's so many levels to every verse in the torah but the the level i want to discuss is the idea that there was no man at least simple shot yet he so what did he do he jumped forward to um save the jew he struck the egyptian okay and this was something that it was a lot of self-sacrifice i mean he grew up in the palace he had a pretty good living and yet at this point he was thrown out of the kingdom and lived in the desert for the next 60 years it was not it was not an easy decision but it was the right thing to do and the torah tells us that and we know that this is something that's just unbelievable thank god moshe did that and he really proved that he was to be the leader of the jewish people that's one of the things obviously he did a lot of other things um there's another halacha in the shokan aruh in in 293 13. now this has come up a lot people have asked me you know to donate money what if you're going to get a plaque on the wall do you give the money in order to give the get the plaque on the wall many synagogues many uh non-profit organizations rely on donations as we know contributions and um they do they put they put out the name the the person it's like on the name of the hospital right you know the name of you can walk into any jewish hospital and you'll see a whole hallway full of plaques so it depends what your motive is now again what many fundraisers will tell the potential donor is you know that if you give so many other people will give and you can't fight that you know you you know it's true if you know the rockefellers i know they're not jewish but doesn't matter whoever if the if the ross child who whatever jewish family would give that people want to stick around with winners people think okay they made a good educated choice for this uh nonprofit and they gave a significant amount of money other people who maybe are just as wealthy or less wealthy will will also give so the the the shocking arc actually says so the lowest form of charity is to give grudgingly now that's the uh yosef cairo ramos isoles the rama adds on the other hand a man should not pride himself on the charity gives for if he does he not only receives no reward but there's actually a punishment in store for him however he may have his name inscribed on anything he donates as a remembrance in fact is the proper thing to do i mean so we're going to find a lot of ideas here that are going to be a little bit like you have to find a balancing act like i mentioned you go to a job interview or you're running for an office which i hope you don't but if you have to or some kind of public servant position and you really believe you are the best person for the job obviously there's going to be a time and a place to speak about your credentials your whole list of accomplishments um but perhaps you do it begrudgingly meaning out of necessity and necessity only um and you don't get this big as you mentioned earlier on some kind of grade high out of just like we've seen false humility and we'll go to um i want to go to michele 16 5 but before that i want you to find it so in gamora 5b it actually discusses this idea about when you give corbanos when you bring an offering to hashem or in this case it's actually about how much toe you learn or how little toe you learn as long as you do it for the sake of heaven it doesn't matter the quantity it matters the quality and your motivation that's what it mentions in gomorrah brachus 5b but uh however an action done with self-aggrandizement is not is not desirable to hashem but rather read to us proverbs 16 5 16 5 reads uh everyone of haughty heart is an abomination to the lord hand to hand he will not go unpunished so in hebrew it's it's despicable it's it's an abomination uh anyone who is haughty of heart uh arrogant of heart so keep that in mind so when you do a mitzvah right it doesn't matter you're jewish you're not jewish you do a mitzvah the only ones who know who need to know about you doing it is god and god alone right when you do a kindness we'll call it the shame shaman for the sake of heaven you do it sincerely and altruistically not for the glory not for any of your own glory but because you know it's the right thing to do try your best obviously to do it anonymously and you will greatly get a great reward from the almighty and this is far greater than any plaque on the wall or admiration admiration of your peers in the same vein he says do not seek positions of leadership because you crave the limelight or you want to be the center of attention this is becoming an ego maniac when should you take the helm only when the situation calls for it as we mentioned about moscow benu so going to perchiavot chapter 2 verse 5. this is the same hillel he says at the very end i think at the very end it's very interesting what he says all along but i just want to get to the end but anyway he would say a boar that means ignoramus cannot be truly god-fearing and ignoramus cannot be pious a bashful person cannot learn people who are afraid to ask questions you're so afraid what people are going to think of you how you ever going to learn a short temper tempered person cannot teach nor does anyone who does much business grow wise right you have to know to minimize your business that was one of the 48 ways but here's the important first place important verse statement in a place where there are no men strive to be a man right and it doesn't matter male female in other words be an adult be the adult in the room right and that's that goes well with the example we gave of moshe robeno he's he looked around there was no man and therefore he he took responsibility if someone else is better at the job than you i'm not talking about for a financial purpose i'm talking about most of these leader leadership positions are uh i would say even even if it's a paid position allow the person who's more qualified who can do who's more effective to do the job right and sit on the sidelines why not now this is going to sound very controversial i'm going to mention i'm not going to mention the problem that we're facing inside today okay but basically social pressures social pressures i will mention just as so we'll know what we're talking about here as an example this is really across the board social pressures but imagine imagine doctors who are not saying we're concerned about your health and therefore we want you to do something but because we want to allow you a certain freedom to go wherever you want and this is actually what doctors have been telling people i know uh you should do this in order to get a passport of some sort as opposed to i'm really concerned about your health and this is going to be good for you so that's there's a lot of social pressure so when we seek honor from others we end up giving in to social pressure and we do things that we would not otherwise do in order to get people's approval right why do people go to university just because everyone else is uh what about a profession your parents give you pressure your uncles your aunts your maybe part of your society you're not going to be very happy if you take up that profession and that was not your choice this is something that this was written years ago but this is a very uh important idea in the let's say the ultra orthodox world and that is the use of a smartphone why get a smartphone it's gonna it's so dangerous and yet people get one because of the the society pressure to get one don't get a smartphone because everyone else has one that's not the reason if you have a reason perhaps but make sure that you try everything like guns in the old west uh rabbi a picture i don't know if you saw westerns when you were young uh you know everybody in the 1800s had to have a gun a sidearm in the old west and it was social pressure to have one you had no choice sometimes it came a matter of survival that's the way people look at cell phones today i mean for sure but it could become so addictive and also if you don't have some kind of uh monitoring device i think they call it a filter of some sort uh it's gonna it could take you down the deep end um but the main thing here about social pressure is don't become a robot you have to choose your own path um you know we all know that social pressure is and can be extremely powerful now there is an ash conformity experiment i want to spell it a s c h people can look it up and i'm sure once it comes up there's going to be other things will come up a milgram experiment bystander effect and we started to talk about what happened in 1964 about this murder i mean queens um but also this recent headline news about a rape on a philadelphia train it's just this thing called group think okay and it's called basically dangerous conformity um now when you go into reading a lot of these or watching some of these research i want to pull up here i have something on the milgram experiment because believe it or not in asia torah in yeshiva it was a big deal that when students came in that they were i would call like decommissioned like debriefed we had to go through like un-brainwashing we were so brainwashed in in secular society and right in outsideage and um talking about peer pressure and the milgram experiment was a video it's five minutes i i mean maybe it's not five minutes but we saw a certain version um what would you do so basically the milgram experiment i want to tell you who the guy is this uh um what was his name um stanley milgram jewish guy and this was after the holocaust he just couldn't figure out how is it that a whole society could i should say the whole society let's say a huge percentage of germany could allow this to take place right the holocaust it's just so people fall into what we call obedience right there's this obedience thing of the peer pressure in society so he did this experiment which today would probably be outlawed uh basically they had a actor sitting in a separate room and he asked you to turn up a volume of electric charge shock yeah what's shock so it started at something normal i say normal what do i know 15 volts all the way up to 450 volts which is actually life-threatening and so they would ask questions and if the person got the question wrong so they would put it up a notch again i don't know exactly uh it was maybe and they told the person to shock him yeah and there was an actor so the actor would scream or actually start off by saying ouch and as the power increased to like you know yeah so and then we're talking about like if they would ask people like you and me before the experiment to predict how many people would you think would do this uh go up to the highest point so most likely we would bring it to like i don't know anywhere between zero to three percent however and that was what was predicted maybe up to three percent would go to life-threatening um things but guess what happened it was interesting hit the 450 mark which was actually life-threatening and they even got to the point where there was no response meaning the person said i have a heart problem i did as i was told yeah and i have a heart problem and they even continued to uh shock the person so there's uh unfortunately this is a real problem are people doing their are they using their internal compass for what is good or are they being persuaded right influenced by peer pressure again going back to if you have you're the only one passing by a person who's in need of help most likely you will help the person but when you're around other people and they're also not helping you're likely i don't know what the percentage is but it's get it's increased with the more people that you're likely not to do anything and that's that's a real shame so um this idea of the ash conformity experiments a classic psychology study in which a group of people gave the obviously wrong answer to question so they basically had like six or seven people in the room and they were asking very simple questions about what they see and you as an observer can see it's obviously what the right answer is but out of these five or six people five of them were paid actors so the sixth person was the experiment and when the other people said the wrong answer which was obvious he also chose or she chose the wrong answer because of the peer pressure so what can i tell you i mean we're talking about staying away from honor you got to do what's right you got to stand up because it's right socially acceptable and this really what is what avraham is all about which is you know these weeks parshiot in the torah talking about so he mentions a shocking 75 of participants confirmed conformed to at least one in 12 tests in the control group with no pressure to conform less than one percent of participants gave the wrong answer and now he mentions i think one of his most famous statements insanity is contagious made you really have to choose the group of people you're gonna hang around with unless you're a real fighter swimming up the stream against um against society it has so much strength and it can really insanity is contagious unless you have the inner strength to remain true to your convictions um of course we all know what happens in advertisement he says be be aware be you should be um beware of the marlboro man now this is going back you know it looks so cool right to smoke and all this stuff but i do have a little bit of a advice a little take on it no a little take listen nobody should really start smoking but i found out you know they said oh people smoke to be cool and you know what maybe it's maybe it's true but those who really smoke they're the cool ones i know people are gonna hate me for this okay so let's let's go on but basically it is a problem for people to fall into the trap just to be cool okay but i will tell you cool people smoke okay anyway uh let's go on so recognize the constant barrage of pressure society thrust upon you especially through advertising the media it's just unbelievable what the what they call mainstream media has done and how they are basically brainwashing i mean this is really going to come up hopefully a lot in the senate and the congress or whatever there has to be there's so much cancer culture what they're doing to uh if i'm allowed to mention dave chappelle um he's quite a funny guy i know it's quite crude a lot of his language but uh what happens in um in comedy is they they basically tell you the truth and it's it's so absurd it makes you laugh right there's so many absurdities to life and what i think about him in terms of he stood up for the black community where nobody else did and spoke in certain ways that you know it's just true unfortunately and when you let me just say there's a certain group of people we're not going to mention who they are because they have too many letters to to say um that the black community is actually quite jealous because look look how far they came in such a short period of time and the black community has been looking for let's say recognition or you know getting out of the you know oppressed being considered second-class citizens and they've come so far and have so much attention to them that he says i don't hate them i'm actually jealous of them and he can make anyway that's where humor comes in um but unfortunately there's this cancel culture people are just brainwashed anyway um i think i went through enough of that part playing the role right another way for people to try to try to impress others is by assuming a role or acting in a manner that they think other people will approve of them but this is yeah it's false now we do need to figure out how to project positively right think it till you make it right i have a smile on my face i truly am happy but if i find myself getting down i can make a smile and there are enzymes in my body right there are things that chemicals that will produce a a better outcome for myself and that that is something that i can try to do there's nothing wrong with that right they say like uh like you're going on a job interview dress smart dress sharp right but if you want to just get up in the morning and feel better about yourself dress sharp i mean there is this idea right you have a power nap you can have a power suit right there's nothing wrong with trying to bring out the best on the outside in fact we have a concept in judaism it's called toko kobaro the truth is your inside should be like you're outside because you should be presenting yourself in the most positive way you are though yeah you should actually be that way but so the inside needs to be now we learned this in many ways but the actual holy ark i don't know if people understand what the ark is made of we also think it's made of gold which it is inside and outside but there's actually a wooden box in the middle so i i thought first of all it didn't matter how heavy it is because the people who raised it up were actually carried by the ark so you might say well it doesn't matter it could have been solid gold but i think from a financial point of view if it was solid gold it would have been just outrageously expensive but hashem said to make a wooden box and you have a outlying gold box yeah overland inside box that's called as well which is probably much thinner than the wood so okay it was lighter but anyway so there's this idea why did we need three boxes the inside is gold the wooden box is the basically the the mainstay and then you have the external box so three boxes actually three boxes one inside the other and that is that our insides are supposed to be like our outsides not the other way around right you fake it till you make it that's fine right and i want to go into a lot of what that that's all about um but basically um there's a story in the gamora about uh two great rosh shivas one decided they actually were like a tag team every other year and they were the roshiva's and one said you know what we're not going to take any more students who don't have the inner qualities okay their insides are not like their outsides and it was almost disaster and the next year the other roshiva said no we're going to accept everybody and they said they added 400 more benches now a bench is not 400 seats i don't know how many how big the benches were but let's say four eight ten more people on each bench you're talking about um it was it was the greatest thing to be able to teach people torah who are not yet uh on the left another yeah 1500 students or more yeah and that's what i want to talk about at the end let me just go through the last paragraph of the book and then we'll go into this idea of doing things la shmoop if you're if you're if you're doing things for the sake of heaven or if you're there yet because we're not all there we have to start somewhere okay and we're going to see some of the ideas is even to entice somebody to do things not for the sake of heaven that hopefully they will come to do it for the sake of heaven so let's continue until we let just a little finish last paragraph right so basically um we all want to be great real honor comes from living like your soul wants you to and being true to yourself don't sit o settle for air sots i never heard that word before but i looked it up e r e-r-s-a-t-z and it's basically air sats means b you being a usually artificial or inferior substitute so cinnamon's cinnamons cinnamons are like artificial bogus dummy fact factatious fake false foul f-a-u-x uh imitation imitative man-made mimic mock pretend sham simulated substitute synthetic where an added antonym is like genuine natural and real so um he ends with this idea that don't settle for the fake version that comes from external validation and recognition as the talmud says we already said in aravind 13b about honor fleas from those who chase it but it runs after those who flee from it so what i wanted to do is what did i say one second oh give me one second beautiful point what did i want to show you sorry um oh here it is i have it so here we have like this idea i mentioned in the very beginning of this series there is a book called the midrash mueller that is written specifically on this mishna and it goes through the 48 ways as well but a little bit more elaborate with a lot more source material so he mentions about this particular idea and now i have to find it [Applause] i'm on the wrong page that this idea of distance yourself distancing yourself from honor meaning that a person doesn't learn torah for the purpose of gaining the title of rabbi i know especially in the christian world the new testament they call the new testament there's a lot of criticism about the pharisees and um rabbi right so it's true this is an ancient jewish teaching right that you don't learn torah in order to be called a rabbi to have a title right because that is looking for honor but rather one should learn only for the sake of love of god which if you go to deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 20 which if you want to read deuteronomy verse 20 verse 20 reads to love the lord your god to listen to his voice and to cleave to him for that is your life and the length of your days to dwell on the land which the lord swore to your forefathers to abraham to isaac and to jacob to give to them so loving god listening to god and cleaving to god that's the ultimate right don't learn torah in order to become a rabbi right don't do it in order to have this this great title all right so there's a lot to say i just want to mention in the beginning i don't want to get too much into the but i into the too much of the details i want to move on but i know that you're reading nefer shechem yes there's a huge discussion not just in nephi shechem but also in shari chuva a lot of the books that we're discussing has this idea what should you do in other words what should your as a beginner what should your motivation be because we have this idea of even if you're not doing something for the right reason you should do it anyway which seems to contradict this idea that if you do it for the wrong reason not only not only will you not get a reward you might even be punished so where does that fit in obviously once you're growing and you you should be on a higher level so if you're doing things for the wrong reason then you will be punished not only withheld the reward but you'll be held accountable in your level but if you're a beginner and you don't know anything about it but you do understand that you will gain wisdom and you will gain some kind of prominence in the in the community it doesn't mean that that's your sole motivation but you are motivated so there's nothing wrong with that according to many i don't want to go into all the different opinions but uh one thing that never shakai mentions um about when you're when you start learning so let me just think it has to do with the prominence of doing over over just just re or studying you got to put it into practice at some point in time uh to integrate it into your person yeah yeah but in the beginning you may not be there yet and we already know that learning not for the right purpose is better than not learning at all okay so how can that be a true statement if we already said that it's actually damaging so there seems to be a contradiction between the gemara and what the rambam says and it seems like um uh what the nefer shakayam replied velocinator says that a person should not be focusing on the feelings of devotion to god while learning torah it sounds crazy and i thought it was absolutely meshuggah absolutely crazy when i first heard it but what he's actually saying is if you want to intellectually get it you have to devote your whole mind to the study of what you're trying to get okay that's true while you're learning but before you start you can be interested in the vegas hashem and loving god in chuva think about truman think about repentance think about what you're going to get out of it but once you're involved in the study you shouldn't be thinking about that anymore only on the actual um on the actual i guess details of what you're learning um i just wanted to mention that then i want to skip because it's really a complicated idea and i don't want to get bogged down in it um so there's still a lot to talk about i'll mention gomorph sakhim it teaches in gomorrah sucking 50b teaches that one who learns torah shalom not for the sake of heaven still gets a reward so there's actually interesting i think i have two verses two contradictory verses is this in here i do have the it's not verses but they're they're talmudic statements um i don't know why i didn't write it down but i have it here everything's here in front of me so maybe i will actually just read it from the beginning of this point okay so the gamora and psalm 50b teaches that one who learns torah not for the sake of heaven receives word up until the heavens ah it's based on previous verses i can't find right now but there's another verse that says that a person who learns la shmoop for the sake of heaven he reward he receives reward above the heavens so in other words it's not for naught that someone who's learning torah may have altered ulterior motives get started get started and you will receive reward because hopefully that will turn into higher and ultra altruistic reasons so the re in the toast votes explains that the shalom not for the sake of heaven which is a mitzvah and for which a person is rewarded refers to learning with no particular intention at all this is the type of torah study shalom again this is for no for no reason i'm sorry right we'll bring a person to eventually for the shema so hopefully that will bring the person to a higher level and he also explains this is in contrast to a person who learns in order to lure over others regarding such a person the gemara actually says anyone who engages in torah shalom not for the sake of heaven it would have been better if he had never been born so you have to understand where you're at on the on on your journey in the beginning that would be uh bad thing if you're trying to again what does it mean gain prominence or seeking honor of some sort um but once you're on that path hopefully your character will start to develop and you'll mature let the torah nourish what it's intended to nourish but don't distort it right um rabbi destler in strive for truth explains this idea but to me that even if the jewish people forsake god and they only study torah as a satisfying intellectual pursuit the light of torah will eventually restore them to hashem in other words that's why one should learn torah even if they're not learning for the right reasons the torah itself is so powerful and hopefully will turn you turn you around again there's a lot of discussion about how this idea of studying in order to become a rabbi to be called a rabbi is problematic and the comment here suggests the distinction in rashi's view between learning in order to be called a rabbi which brings death to a person and learning for honor which brings reward to a person is as follows so the one who learns for the sake of being called rabbi may start to believe he's qualified to instruct others in the ideals of torah this can actually be harmful to his students who will receive the message that is is ideal to use the torah to enhance one's own ego this is in contrast with the person who studies to receive honor he never adopts the attitude he's worthy of conveying to our ideals to other and he can therefore use honor as a motivational tool when he starts out starting out so this is really what i wanted to mention now there is one more small piece and that is that a torah scholar a trutal scholar so he knows that when he walks into a room everyone stands up there's nothing you can do you're walking into the room but if you see in the distance a lot of people sitting and they know you know they honor you you can walk a different way and create a situation where they wouldn't stand up for you so i'll just read what he says the time is also suggesting when this torah scholar sees people sitting sitting alone sitting along the path which he intends to walk he instead takes a round about root so as not to cause those sitting to stand up before him and honor him he does this because he keeps himself far away from honor this person will merit torah now we talked about the 40 ways in order to acquire torah it doesn't mean that he will have a clearer path to acquiring torah it means that he will actually receive torah metaphysically by running away from honor the torah will just become infused in him it's just like an amazing idea i'm not saying he doesn't have to work for it but i guess the actual effort he made by not causing his honor honor all the way up to the top yeah he'll receive even more torah because the torah is the honor itself which is an amazing idea don't forget um by the way where do we know that you're supposed to stand up for a torah scholar what are you supposed to do it's one of the six thirteen commandments look in leviticus 1932 we need teachers you can't you know i'm saying like we said from the very beginning if someone else can do the job then let them do it man be a man right when there's no man be a man if there's no teachers and you have the gift of speaking or learning or both then you should figure out how to go about doing it so read for us leviticus 19 32. it says you shall rise before a venerable person and you shall respect the elderly and you shall fear your god i am the lord now the very fact that the second part of the verse mentions and you shall respect the elderly go back to the original part you shall rise before a venerable person that's how it's translated anyway say the takum literally i mean we do translate that as the elderly but then the next statement is zakken someone who's elderly so which one is it so the save um for the save is really means like white hair so we say that the the wisdom turns your hair white but anyway it's a you cannot say it means the same thing we know what it means and it's saying that for someone who is wise that's why we stand up for the elderly because they're wise not just because the elder that's another verse that says for the elderly you stand up okay so for the wise you have to you know we recognize the value right why else would you be standing up it's honor so we have the obligation to honor those and rabbi just means teacher so what are you supposed to do if you have it you have to give it away and that's what i believe every jew really should be a teacher because we all have the mitzvah to learn one of the six thirteen commandments and to learn is derive from the verse you shall teach you shall teach as weinberg ali said you should learn in order to teach doesn't mean you actually will teach but at least learn in order to in order to give it away and if you have the ability to give it away you better damn do it right you better find the opportunities to give it away in a um you know a clear concise fashion with good character and um may i ask rabbi a question um in uh given a um do you guys consider do you guys stand with rabbi breidowitz like if he enters the room do do people stand yes of course yes yeah i thought so yeah yeah for sure beautiful yeah anybody who's respected as a rabbi was coming from the people not from him he will not in fact he'll usually if people walk stand up he'll quickly try to sit down himself or tell others to to sit down it's out of humility i mean look you have secular leaders i think the president of the united states walks into a room i think yeah the queen of england and what stands up it's what they call protocol or the queen i think she walks i think the same thing i could be wrong but there are certain things and they could be not very smart but because of their their honor you do it here we're doing it because of the wisdom that they have okay well done yeah well done for sure beautiful stuff beautiful stuff well is that uh is that it for today rabbi it's just a beautiful series yeah that'll be it for now that'll be it for now distance oneself from honor and understand all the reason behind it just makes uh all the difference but don't ever be afraid to uh to uh study and learn and uh to be bold out there um hashem will straighten you out if you're approaching uh out of love for him and trying to cleave to him i think is a general overview um so um yeah we hope you're all encouraged i love this series it only gets better and better as we keep going up the number 48 so hashem willing rabbi is your scheduled permit number 37 next week so far so good yes looking forward all right so hashem william will be back next week same time uh with number 37 of the 48 ways to wisdom and we wish you all have a wonderful wonderful week [Music] yes is