Daily Chidush - Hakol LeTova (Everything Is For the Good)

0:00Hello, how are you? I hope you're having a good day. I wanted to give you the daily chiddush. We're still in parashat Vayikra. We're still talking about korbanot. We're still talking about Moshe Rabbeinu and his humility. But right now, we need to talk about something that's very relevant to day-to-day life. Every day someone goes to work, deals with his family, deals with issues. Sometimes there are good days, sometimes there are tough days. But at the end of the day, we all know that the only way to get anything done in this world is by praying to Hashem. At the end of the day, we all have to pray to Hashem, just like Am Yisrael prayed to Hashem every single day for the manna in the Midbar for 40 years, even though the manna came down every single day. Chazal say, the Sages say, that the reason why Hashem gave them manna every single day, instead of not giving it to them just in one shot and that's it, or maybe once a year, is because Hashem said, if I would have given them all of their parnasah, all of the food that they needed, all of the sustenance that they needed in one shot, they would only think about Me once. If I would have done it once a year, they would only think about Me once a year, and talk to Me once a year. But because they didn't know whether they were going to get it every day, every day was a mystery.

1:17so they pray to me and they talk to me every single day. We know and we learned this week that the korbanot, the sacrifices, the offerings that we brought in the Mishkan, in the desert, or in the Beit HaMikdash Rishon v'Sheni, in today's age where we don't have the Beit HaMikdash, we learned from Hoshea that "let our lips substitute for bulls," meaning our prayers are replacing The korbanot, the sacrifices. But what kind of prayer? Is it just any prayer? No. Just like Hashem told us. First, be an ethical person. Then bring Me the korban. First, do real teshuva. Be sincere about your sorrow, showing that you are just as upset as I am about committing this sin. And then, come to Me and give Me the korban. because if you're just going to pray like a robot, I don't want your korban. It's your korban. Keep it. So we learned this already from yesterday. But now there are times when we pray and pray and pray, and we don't get answers. How could this be? Hashem told us that He hears every single prayer. He didn't say He answers every single prayer, but He said He hears every single prayer. And sometimes we pray so hard that we, our eyes are coming out of our head already. We want something, whether we want health, happiness, success, whatever it is. So here we have to go back to the source. Here we have to go back to the man, the prophet of all prophets that spoke to Hashem face to face. Moshe Rabbeinu. In Parashat Va'etchanan, in Devarim chapter 3 verse 23.

2:44that we, our eyes are coming out of our heads already. We want something, whether we want health, happiness, success, whatever it is. So here we have to go back to the source. Here we have to go back to the man, the prophet of all prophets who spoke to Hashem face to face—Moshe Rabbeinu. In Parashat Va'etchanan, in Deuteronomy chapter 3, verse 23. It says, I begged, I implored Hashem at that time saying, my Lord Hashem, you have begun to show your servant your greatness and your strong hand. So here, Chazal is telling us that Moshe Rabbeinu is begging Hashem. "Va'etchanan" literally means beg. He's begging Hashem. What is he begging Hashem for? He's begging Hashem to let him go into Eretz Yisrael. into Eretz Yisrael. The only thing that he's ever wanted, the only thing he's really ever asked for. He's asking, I've led Am Yisrael for the last 80 years. I brought the Torah from You and gave it to them. I rebuked them when I needed to. I protected Your name. I sanctified Your name. I did everything I could. Please, Hashem, let me go into Eretz Yisrael. Change Your mind. Change the punishment that You told me, that because I hit the rock,

4:12I will not be allowed to go into Eretz Yisrael. Not me and not Aharon. Please, let me go into Eretz Yisrael. And we know here that Chazal explain to us that Moshe Rabbeinu prayed 515 times. How do we know 515 times? It's not written in words as 515 times. Because the numerical value, the gematria, of the word Vayetchanan (and I begged) is 515. Each letter has a numerical value. It's 515. So there's a lot more to the words that are put into the Torah than just the words. It's not an English book or a history book or a science book. Every single word has enough secrets to make you research it for a lifetime. Just one word. So Moshe Rabbeinu prayed 515 times. Sometimes we pray 515 times. We don't get answered. So what's the difference between us and Moshe Rabbeinu? When Miriam was punished by Hashem for saying Lashon Hara, even though the Lashon Hara she said was technically supposed to help and, on our level, it wouldn't even be considered Lashon Hara, Hashem still punished her with Tzara'at, a spiritual and physical disease. The entire nation of Israel prayed for the prophetess Miriam for Hashem to cure her—millions of people.

5:12When Miriam was punished by Hashem for saying Lashon Hara, even though the Lashon Hara she said was technically supposed to be helpful and, at our level, it wouldn't even be considered Lashon Hara, Hashem punished her with Tzaraat, a spiritual and physical disease. The entire nation of Israel prayed for the prophetess Miriam for Hashem to cure her—millions of people. prayed for Miriam and it didn't work. Then Aharon goes to Moshe and he says, "Please, she's our blood, she's our sister, please pray for her." It says in the Torah, Moshe said two verses, that's it, maybe took 10 seconds, and she was cured instantly. So we see here that Moshe Rabbeinu's single prayer, his single prayer, was bigger than the entire nation of Israel. So now you have here, going back to Parashat Va'etchanan, and he prayed 515 times. So much so that Chazal tells us the angels started getting scared, telling Hashem, please answer him or stop him or do something because he's shaking up the heavens and we're scared. 515 times.

6:34And that's why in the same parashat Va'etchanan, chapter 3, verse 27, it says, "Do not continue to speak to me further about this matter." Rav lach means it's too much for you. Stop. Enough. Why? Because Hashem told them one more prayer. If you do one more prayer, 516, I have to give you what you want. And I don't want to give you what you want. What do you mean? If we pray, give us what we want. No? No, my friends. Just like Shlomo HaMelech, the smartest man, the wisest man of all time. I got a blessing from Hashem at the age of 13 when he became king. He asked Hashem to give him wisdom so he could judge his nation favorably. Hashem says usually people pray for money, they pray for power. You pray for wisdom so you could judge My nation favorably, My children favorably by the Torah? That means that you really love them. And that means you really love Me and you love My Torah. And therefore, I'll give you everything. I'll give you power, I'll give you money.

8:00And I'll give you wisdom like no other. King Solomon, with his wisdom, one day prays to Hashem. And he says, Hashem, please, do not answer the prayers of those in Am Yisrael and those around that are praying to You very hard. Do not answer them. And if there is a problem that will happen as a result of their prayer that he is not aware of, that that person is not aware of. Shlomo HaMelech is telling us a big secret. Since Hashem is not bound to time, He has the past, He is the present, and He is the future, He knows what's going to happen as a result of what we want. And He knows that what we want can sometimes lead to good, but many times what we want can lead to bad. Shlomo HaMelech gave us the secret over here and he says to Hashem, "Please, Hashem, don't answer those prayers, even if they pray hard. But if you know that it's gonna be bad for them in the end, please don't answer those prayers." And this goes back to parashat Va'etchanan. Why didn't Hashem answer Moshe Rabbeinu, the prophet of all prophets? Because Hashem decreed that everything that Moshe Rabbeinu is permanent.

9:27The Mishkan that he built was never destroyed. The first Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. The second Beit HaMikdash was destroyed. But the Mishkan from the desert, which was not even comparable in significance to the Beit HaMikdash in terms of size and grandeur, was never destroyed. No one ever stole anything from it. The Torah, eternity. Am Yisrael, eternity. Everything that Moshe Rabbeinu... touched was eternal. That's the rule that Hashem decreed in the world, which means that if Hashem would have listened to Moshe Rabbeinu, he would have let him go into Eretz Yisrael. The first thing Moshe Rabbeinu would have done is built the Beit HaMikdash. And since Hashem knew the future, He knew that one day Am Yisrael is not going to have Moshe Rabbeinu to lead them, to rebuke them, to tell them what they're doing wrong before it's too late, and... And if that happens, He wouldn't be able to help them. And Hashem knew that one day, Am Yisrael is going to sin so badly, that the Malach HaMavet, the Satan, the Yetzer Hara, all the same, is going to come to Hashem and say, listen, what Am Yisrael did over here, it's a death penalty. Idol worship, it's a death penalty. You have to destroy the nation.

10:54And this is actually what happened with the first Beit HaMikdash. That's why Hashem said, yes, the rules that I gave to them, I also gave to myself. And according to my own rules in the Torah, I have to destroy them. But there's only one way that I can save them. I'll destroy my own house. I'll destroy my own Beit HaMikdash. And that's why Hashem allowed the Beit HaMikdash, the first and the second one, to be destroyed. But if Moshe Rabbeinu's prayer would have been answered, he would not have had that option because Hashem also made a rule that everything Moshe Rabbeinu touched would have to be eternal. Therefore, when that would have happened in the future, he wouldn't have been able to destroy the Beit HaMikdash, his own house on earth. Consequently, he would have had to destroy his own children, his own nation, his own people, and therefore the entire world. So we see here that sometimes we pray and we pray and we pray, and Chazal tells us in the Gemara and several other places, we pray a lot, but there are only two reasons why our prayers are not answered. One, because we didn't pray enough.

12:10Maybe we only prayed one time, and we really needed to pray according to Hashem's cheshbon, according to Hashem's accounting. If you want this to happen, you have to pray 50 times. We only prayed once, five times, 15 times, 20 times. We gave up at prayer number 49, right before the salvation would have come. We gave up. Or the prayer that we made was like robots, like we were talking about yesterday. A prayer with no kavanah is like a guf without a neshamah. Prayer with no meaning, no focus, is like a body without a soul. So, we prayed a thousand times, but with no meaning, it's bupkis—it's worth nothing. Just like the korban that has no meaning, it's worth nothing; it's just a dead animal. So that's one reason—maybe we didn't pray enough or maybe our prayers lacked meaning. On the other hand, maybe the answer is no. That's the only other reason—maybe the answer is no. Because what you want, you may not be aware, but what you want is bad for you. Maybe you want health. How could having good health be bad for me? Because Hashem may have decreed that you will have bad health for six months, a year, two years, or three years to fix the sins that you've made in this life or a previous life. And without this sickness and suffering that you have,

13:36You will not be able to go to Gan Eden because the rest of what you're doing is righteous. The rest of what you're doing is perfect. You have a ticket to Gan Eden. You have a ticket to Olam HaBa. But you have to suffer a little bit. How could losing money be good for me? Because Hashem calls money in the Gemara, damim, blood. Hashem said when you make a big sin and He's supposed to kill you, Instead of killing you because he knows that you have the ability and possibility to make teshuva, he'll take your money first. That's the first warning shot. I'm going to take a hundred thousand from you. I'm going to take a million dollars from you. I'm going to take five million from you. I'm going to take whatever you have. You think it's bad. You're praying for Hashem to give you salvation. But in reality, He's saving your life. He's giving you an opportunity to repent, to do teshuva, to get a ticket to eternal life of bliss and amazing things that we can't even imagine. amazing, amazing things that we can't even imagine. So now, to finish off, we'll conclude with something that will give us an understanding of why we constantly reference the Gemara and the sages. How do we know they're reliable? How do we know they're reliable?

14:51We know we got the Torah Bechtav, and even the Goyim agree we got the Torah Bechtav, the written Torah, at Har Sinai. We also say that we got the oral Torah also at Har Sinai. How do we know that the oral Torah, which was oral for many, many years, many centuries, is also divine? All you have to do is look. There are thousands upon thousands of examples, but we'll look at something relevant. As we all know, the sun, a huge, huge star full of fire, and for anyone who doesn't know, scientists have estimated to a point where it's near exact. They're estimating that the amount of heat that comes out of the Sun is 6,000 degrees Celsius. Somewhere in a neighborhood of almost 11,000 degrees Fahrenheit by the time it reaches Earth, it's somewhere in a neighborhood of 90 degrees, 95 degrees, 80 degrees, 70 degrees, and so on. If it were any hotter, we wouldn't survive. But scientists discovered Dr. Norah Vidal, a senior astronomer at the Greenwich Observatory in England, and...

16:11Professor of astronomy at the Australian National University and a visiting professor at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says that the Sun's 6000 degrees Celsius is really an illusion. The real temperature of the inner Sun is more than 15 million degrees, but there's something that blocks it. There's something called a shell or a sheath that blocks it that we discovered in recent generations. Right now we discovered it. This is science with telescopes and billions and billions of dollars of research. They've discovered that the only reason we're able to exist is because of this shell, this sheath, S-H-E-A-T-H, that's covering the sun, that's really containing the 15 million degrees Celsius.

17:11Is this related to Chazal? Because Chazal already knew this. In Psalms 19:5, King David says, "He has set up a tent for the sun." Chazal explain this in the Midrash, teaching us that the sun, without telescopes—remember this is 3,000 years ago—has a shell that's protecting us. In the Gemara Masechet Avoda Zara page 3b, the Gemara is a key part of the whole Torah. It says Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish says there is no actual Gehenom in the future to come, meaning at the time of the Messiah. Rather, the punishment to the wicked will be meted out thus: The Holy One, blessed is He, will take the sun out of its sheath. Allow it to blaze forth at full strength. The wicked people will be judged by the intensity of the sunlight, while the righteous will be healed by it. First and foremost, we learn something here: the first punishment in the times of the Messiah will be on earth. The second is Gehinnom, which we haven't started talking about.

18:35Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish says that those who do not obey the Torah will be punished in a very interesting and painful way, where Hashem, HaKadosh Baruch Hu, will take the sun out of its sheath, out of its shell, and it will burn the wicked people. But at the same time, this very same 15 million degrees is actually going to heal and intensify the righteous. and make better the righteous. Obviously, Hashem is above nature. Why is He going to punish these people? Because they didn't follow the Torah. Why is He going to reward the others? Because they follow the Torah. But the most important thing that we learn specifically here, as it pertains to the sun and the Gemara as a whole, is that the Gemara was written nearly 2,000 years ago, yet they had information that no man could have had because we still didn't have telescopes. We only developed telescopes about 400 years ago when Galileo Galilei discovered, you know, discovered a telescope, even though some people say he was the second person. That's 400 years ago, but the telescope he had was like something you buy for your kids at Toys 'R' Us now. They couldn't see anything. 2,000 years ago, they didn't have even that. But yet they knew information that we only discovered in the last couple of decades.

20:03How? Because the One who put the sun there, He let them know. And the One whom we want to answer our prayers, He's letting us know. If you want your prayers answered, just give me a reason. Number one, make sure you have focus. Number two, make sure that you're looking for things that are actually going to connect you to Me and help your connection with Me. Not just because you want money, or because you want to buy a bigger house. What's the bigger house going to do? Oh, you're going to host more guests for Shabbat? Okay, I'll give you a bigger house. But why? You want a bigger house because you want to compete with your partner in business who has a nicer house? That's not a prayer that's going to be answered. And if it does, there's a bigger problem than what we started talking about. So, Be'ezrat Hashem, we learn this: we learn that every one of our prayers is heard in Shamayim. The only time they're not answered is if we didn't pray enough, or if the answer is no because Hashem is doing us a favor and helping us out of dangers we're putting ourselves in without even knowing. Chazakim u'Baruchim, thank you for learning with me, and may Hashem continue to bless you.