Daily Chidush: Brit Yitzchak In Boca Raton Raising Children.

0:00First of all, mazal tov, may you have a lot of good, a lot of success in everything that you do, and build a house full of Torah. We just read some parts of the Zohar and try to find a few things that we actually can understand because most of us don't speak Leshon HaKodesh, let alone Aramaic. So, on page 18, it uses a verse from Sefer Melachim, Book of Kings.

1:32And make sure you hold to it and learn Hashem's Torah. This little boy starts screaming, saying, "Don't mention that name next to me because my father told me that the real God is this," and he takes out a statue. "This is the real God." And Eliyahu HaNavi is not like us. He didn't have as much of a tolerance for sinners. And he says at that very moment when he said that this is the real God, this statue, the verse in the Torah that says that the idol worshipers will fall on top of their idols, happened. And the kid fell on top of his idol and died. But Eliyahu HaNavi is trying to teach us something here. He says, what do we learn from this little boy? He's only three years old, and I just told him I could save his life. He's inside a garbage bag; I could save his life. And he tells me, no, my father taught me otherwise. My father taught me otherwise, meaning that what our parents teach us is more valuable than our own life sometimes. We have to have a good foundation.

2:55In the next page, page 19, it uses a verse from the Book of Jeremiah. And then it continues, Jeremiah is telling us that Hashem is giving us a condition. He says, "I made a Brit. I made a Brit with Am Yisrael and, in essence, to protect the entire world. This Brit is learning Torah." And if there's not a person somewhere in the world learning Torah at some point, 24 hours a day, someone has to be learning Torah, the rules of the world will cease to exist. Now, in the old days, we didn't really understand what this really meant. How could the world just stop working? So, Hashem is going to do like what He did with the flood, but that took a year. But he says, the rules of the world will cease to exist at that point. What we found out recently is that everything, as Einstein finally caught up to the Torah, is energy. Then, later on, as time progressed, we began discovering the makeup of an atom. An atom, in essence, consists of two major parts: one small dot and one big dot, an electron and a proton.

4:23But if you look at an atom, you see that these two dots, first of all, are significantly different in size. It's like comparing the Earth to the sun. Huge, huge difference as far as size. And the distance between them is like the Earth and the sun, meaning that 99.98% of an atom is empty space—it's nothing. So whether it's this book, or this table, or it's you, or it's me, or it's the world, the reality of everything is that most of everything is nothing. To such an extent that the actual matter we have in the universe is so small that if it was condensed, all of the matter in all of the galaxies, according to scientists, would fit in a matchbox. So how come we see everything as solid? How come you see me, I see you, you see the bottle, you see the snap, you see everything else? It's no different than the fan that's on top of you. Now the fan is stopped right now, so you see there are five blades. But if it were going at top speed, it would look like it was a single blade.

5:37If you slow it down, it would look like maybe two blades. Slow it down a little more, three blades. Eventually, when it stops, it's five blades. The reason it looks solid initially or appears as a single blade is because it's going really, really fast. The same concept applies to the atom. The one ball that's spinning around the other ball is spinning so fast that everything looks like it's solid, but in reality, it's not. So what is Yirmiyahu telling us here? He's telling us that Hashem gave us a condition. If we don't teach our children and ourselves to learn Torah, to contribute to mankind in such an important condition, in such an important way, chas v'shalom, we can reach a situation where everyone ceases to study Torah. Rabbi Shimshon Rafael Hirsch emphasizes that if, chas v'shalom, there ever comes a time when no one studies Torah—even for a moment—the natural order of existence would falter, as the atoms that make up the world would cease to function correctly. It is our duty to maintain the study of Torah daily, as this is vital for sustaining the very fabric of Creation. duty to learn Torah at some point every single day, chas v'shalom, we can get to a point in such a weak generation that at some point someone would stop learning Torah, everyone would stop learning Torah. And he's telling you here, if there were ever chas v'shalom such a point where no one would be learning Torah, even for a moment, we're not talking about for an hour or a week or two months, for a moment, the rules of the world would cease to exist, meaning that the atom will stop spinning. And what happens when the atom stops spinning?

6:53The emptiness will be exposed. There are no explosions. There's no flood. There's no war. It just ceases to exist. Everything disappears. So one of the most important parts, as the Rav said, is education. You have to make sure that the parents are educating the kids, ensuring they go to good schools, and laying a solid foundation. But another crucial aspect, B'ezrat Hashem, as the children grow up, is seeing the continuous education at home, in school, and in between through interactions with friends. This holistic approach is key for instilling enduring values and understanding. Page 63, and also mentioned on page 73, discusses how if you take a wine that's not kosher—specifically wine used for idol worship—and you take even one drop, one drop of this non-kosher wine, and you put it into a kosher bottle of wine—no matter if it's a giant bottle—even a little tiny drop can cause the entire bottle to become treif (non-kosher).

8:03If it's like taste, if it's like makeup, it ruins the entire thing. Just one tiny little idol to worship, you put it into a giant bottle of wine, and it ruins the whole thing. What is this like? You can have all the education in the world. You can send a kid to the best yeshiva in the world. You can have parents that love him dearly and can't wait to see him when he gets home. But if he's surrounding himself... With just one, he has a hundred friends. One bad kid, that he likes to hang out with every Shabbat, bar minan, you put the kid in danger. And we all know that teshuva is not easy. At some point, everybody here did teshuva; even if you were from birth, you did teshuva. You have to do teshuva every day. We all know teshuva is not easy. So the best favor you could do for this kid is to make sure he doesn't have to do teshuva like we did. He has to do it easily. And b'ezrat Hashem, it all starts at home. Pick good friends. Make sure you're not so easy on all. Let him be friends with people that he likes, but with caution. Because sometimes the people that the kids like are the popular ones that cause trouble. It's not about making them happy now; it's making sure that they're happy, b'ezrat Hashem, later on. B'ezrat Hashem, you should have a lot of hatzlacha, parnassa, briut, and all the good that's in this world.