Get Uncomfortable AMAZING Rav Yaacov Galinsky Story

0:11In the book, Doresh Tov, by Rabbi Efraim Kahlon—who is my rabbi—it is a three-part book, consisting of three volumes. He has many, many good stories. And one of the stories—no, it's only in Hebrew. We'll do it in English one day. One of the stories is about Rabbi Galinsky. Rabbi Galinsky...

1:31take everyone out, get into all the teshuva. All of them go to the kollel. Today, the rabbi goes into the nightclub, he doesn't come out. Who comes out of the nightclub today? Hashem, there's Sodom and Gomorrah, and you go in there, you start promoting the club at the end of the night. Rabbi Galinsky was kodesh kodashim. So, Rabbi Galinsky says, I'm from the yeshiva of Navardok. The same rabbi that we talked about, we started with Rabbi Yisrael from Salant, the Saba of Navardok. He says, "I'm from his yeshiva." We knew that in order for us to have the Torah become part of our lives, we learned from our teacher that we must do mesirut nefesh. We must self-sacrifice to reach a point of truly becoming attached to Hashem. So one day as a young student, I thought to myself, you know, I need to work on my Yirat Shamayim. I need to work on my fear of the Almighty. I learned Torah all day, I learned Gemara, I learned Mussar, I learned this, I learned that, but I need to make sure that I have the right amount of fear. The Gemara in Masechet Berachot says if someone has a Yetzir Hara, say Kriyat Shema.

2:57someone who has a Yetzer Hara to make a sin, say Shema Yisrael. Remind yourself there's a God. If that's not enough, learn Torah. Remind yourself what the Torah says. If that's not enough, remind yourself of the day you're going to die. Why? Because you're going to have to pay the bill. So, I said, okay, Rabbi Glinski is saying, let me go prepare myself for the day I'm going to die. What's it going to look like? So I decide I'm going to go to the Beit Kvarot. I'm going to go to the cemetery at night. Now that's already scary. I'm already scared telling the story, thinking about the cemetery at night. So he goes to the cemetery at night. In a Jewish cemetery, there's also a mikveh where they wash the deceased bodies. He says, I'm going to go to the cemetery at night and dip in the mikveh where they wash the deceased bodies.

4:01So Rav Galinsky, a young man, in the middle of the night, is telling the story. He says just the wind, the whistling of the wind, was terrifying. The whistling of the wind was terrifying. Being in a cemetery in the middle of the night, it's so dark. And I see this mikveh, and everything is dark and scary. I said, okay, I'm going to take off my clothes really quickly, I'm going to dip and come out. Before I get a heart attack, I'll do it really quickly. And this is going to be a memory I'll never forget. Now I'm going to have yirat shamayim finally. He takes off his clothes really quickly. He goes into the mikveh. And as soon as he goes into the mikveh, he feels like he's stepping on a body. He says, from the fear that I had, I passed out. But then I passed out, I fell into the water, and the water splashed in my face and woke me up. I got so scared that I started coming out, and the body came out with me. Then I see it's one of the guys from the yeshiva. We're looking at each other, both of us scared to death. Then I thought to myself,

5:25You know, Yirat Shamayim is not the only thing I have to work on. I also have to work on my ga'avah, my pride. Why my pride? Why did I think that I'm the only one that would have this brilliant idea of going to the cemetery and dipping in a mikveh? Somebody else is also brilliant in yeshiva, not only me. We often think we're already tzaddikim just by thinking about it. He went and did it, and he's realizing that he has to work on another middah, another character trait. That's Rav Galinsky. But you see from the story of how Rabbi Yisrael from Salant started his whole organization through mesirut nefesh. Then he goes to the Saba MiNovardok, goes to Rav Galinsky. You see the byproduct. The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, illustrating the profound impact of dedication and self-sacrifice in achieving spiritual success. And this is what Am Yisrael needs to understand: if you want to have this share of the world to come that everybody keeps talking about, you have to start getting used to mesirat nefesh. You have to start getting used to self-sacrifice. You can't just live a comfortable life, enjoy this world on a regular basis, and think that your olam haba is going to look pretty. It's not realistic.

6:38You didn't come to enjoy this world. I'm not saying you came here to be miserable. I'm not saying you're supposed to suffer in some corner as a homeless person. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that you are supposed to get used to making yourself uncomfortable for the sake of Hashem. So if it's easy for you to learn 15 minutes a day, then that means it's not enough. You have to start learning for a half hour. If it's easy for you to learn for half an hour, then it's time for you to learn for an hour. If it's easy for you to listen to my lectures online or here, great. You have to listen to more lectures, not just once a week. If you're listening to lectures all week, all day there's lectures, lectures, lectures, lectures, lectures. It's easy for you. You listen to them on the way to work. You listen to them on the way home. That's your Torah. It's easy for you to listen to lectures. It's time to open a book, my friend. You can't just listen to lectures your whole life. Yes, we make it easy for you, Baruch Hashem. Rabbis who work hard to arrange these lectures make it easy for people to learn. It's good, it's important. You should continue to listen to lectures, but there's levels of Torah.

8:01Lectures are one level, but learning yourself from Gemara, from the books themselves, is a higher level, of course. It's more difficult. You're going to have to do the hard work of figuring out what it says. If it's easy for you to learn from Me'am Lo'ez, let's say, easy for you to learn from some book that one of the tzaddikim wrote, great, time to learn Gemara. If it's easy for you to learn Gemara, it's time to learn Gemara with Tosafot. And it keeps going and going and going and going. But now, the ultimate purpose of all of it, all of this learning, is not for you guys to turn into encyclopedias and start teaching me. It's for you to apply all of it. Start applying everything you've learned. When you see in Masechet Berachot, which is usually the first Gemara that people study, you'll notice that in Masechet Berachot, it says that if a man has a woman as a customer, and he has to give her change, he must give her change promptly. If he delays in giving her the change, it implies ulterior motives.

9:25One, two, three, four, five, six. He's taking his time, giving change. So the Gemara says, there's no way for him not to go to Gehinnom for that. Why is he going to Gehinnom? He's scheming. He just gave change, but because he's only taking his time, according to the Gemara, to look her up. Just like you said, chazak u'baruch. Look at our hands, not to look at our body; look at our hands. So now, if a person is going to go to Gehinom for looking at a woman's hand that's not his wife, what do you think he's going to get for looking at her body? What do you think he's going to get for looking to see how the skirt fits her? or how the shirt is cut off and how she's not modest or modest or this or that. What do you think he's going to get for that? Is he going to get Gan Eden for that? Where does it say in the Torah that he gets Gan Eden for that? It doesn't say that. It says the opposite. So, learning all of this Torah, shiurim, Gemara, all of these things that we just talked about, you have to apply it. You have to make sure that the eyes you have...

10:48These eyes are the best camera in the world. Why? Because they never forget. You don't need a memory stick; they never forget. Everything that you ever see is always going to be there. You look at a woman once, and you're always going to remember what she looks like. And you're always going to remember how you saw her. So if you choose to use your eyes to look at immodesty, you're never going to forget it. If you choose to exercise that immodesty, to take action, be aware of the consequences on your spiritual journey. Use your eyes wisely and guard your heart. with a woman that you're not allowed to be with, just know, just know, that when 120 comes, and you go to Judgment Day, she's going to be with you at the trial. And according to the Gemara, she's going to be like a kelev, tied to you at all times and never leave you. So even though you're going to have your wife, B'ezrat Hashem, and kids, kosher family, everybody did teshuvah, you're going to have this beast from your twenties still chasing you. Hey! Shmuley! Remember me? Embarrassed next to your tzaddekes wife and kids. Why? Because you took action on something the Gemara says not to do. So the point of learning all this material is to understand how to apply it. When you start applying it, you begin to become a better quality person. So now...

12:11That we understand that in order for any of these Mishnayot that we're going to learn in Pirkei Avot, we understand that Olam Haba is not a free ticket. Just because your mom is Jewish does not mean anything. It just means you have a ticket. It doesn't mean that your ticket's going to work. You could show up at the door and say, okay, you have a very nice ticket, beautiful ticket, but it says on the back of the ticket, no shoes, no shirt, no service. You know how they say in the 7-Elevens, they always have a sign on the door: "No shoes, no shirt, no service"? Because guys from the beach come there with no shirt, nothing, and they want to buy stuff. By the way, the owner of the place says, "Listen, I don't want the rest of my customers seeing you like that. So if you're going to buy something from my store, put a shirt on, put your shoes on, and you'll get service." But if you show up and you don't exercise these rules, then you're not going to get any service. It's the same thing with a ticket to Olam Haba. The ticket to Olam Haba indicates that you have a ticket, but make sure, as the Rambam says, you don't fall under the definition of someone who cuts himself out of Am Yisrael. For all the details, refer to Masechet Sanhedrin, pages 90 to 98, and Rosh Hashanah, page 17. Remember that the path to Olam Haba requires effort and adherence to the guidelines provided by our sages.

13:36So we know that it is not going to be easy to get to the next world, but it is possible. That is why the Mishnah starts with this teaching. To show you that it does not matter who you are. It does not matter if you are Nisan or Moshe Rabbeinu. Everyone has the ability to get to the next world, which requires some work.